discostu, your assertions about Christianity(negative) vs. your assertions about Wicca(positive) save for your belief that neither are true make you seem a little disingenious about your athiesm. What I mean to say is you seem less like a true athiest after reading your posts and more like a rejector of one particular religion. After all the Wiccans really believe the same as you(in modern Wicca anyway). The power in oneself to manipulate the environment around them. Is it any wonder given that your "beliefs" are similar that you would be sitting here defending Wicca while chiding the Christian religion?
I'm not bashing Christianity, only certain Christians. I've stayed well away from the tenents of the religion in this discussion because I don't think that's the point. From what I see here's the basic issue: there's a group of people that call themselves Christians that are an embarassment. Play a thought game for a moment, pretend you've never heard of either Christianity or Wicca, remove all predispositions about either, now re-read this thread. Which religion would you be interested in? I think we have a group of people making vast declarative statements about things they don't understand that, and that group is all tied to Christianity. These are the folks reading people's mind, these are the folks showing a dramatic fear of something they clearly know nothing about.
As for my belief in myself that stops at the boundaries of the physical and the known. I don't play with any of that woovy groovy stuff. I know what I'm capable of and it has never and will never involve spells or other trapping of Wicca or other forms of paganism. That's just not my game.