The Trouble With Faith...

[Antlerman]

I think we are actually hunting the same beast with different weapons.

That's interesting you say so. I hunt it to integrate a rational understanding into an experiential release. How so with you?

[par4dcourse]

I think we are actually hunting the same beast with different weapons.

That's interesting you say so. I hunt it to integrate a rational understanding into an experiential release. How so with you?

I'm still after the rational understanding.

[SairB]

The positive I see with atheism is that it advances reason and rationality, which is good and necessary in our evolution, by breaking apart the mythic structures of our historical past to help move us into a rational worldspace. Rightly so. The negative, is that it throws out the baby with the bathwater. It is unable to separate out genuine and valid spiritual experience from mythical structures. It therefore fails as a valid system of reason. It fails Reason itself. Atheism in the modern context instead becomes more a radical iconoclasm, a smashing of the old idols without any sort of integral vision of the future. I would say that atheism is a minor tool at best. It should not ignorantly seek the destruction of spirituality (which it cannot), but of the old mythic structures the spiritual in is unfortunately still currently tied to it. (There are reasons that is so). But atheism itself has no ultimate vision of human experience for a future, which of necessity must include what has existed and does exist within it from the beginning.

 

I agree, largely, but with the modification that atheism is a starting position, rather than an end position. I realise that sounds a little strange, coming from an ex-Christian writing to other ex-Christians! But we were all, undoubtedly, schooled to believe in Christian mythology - we weren't born with innate faith. What we were born with is innate curiosity, an innate need to bond with others and connect with the world around us. Whilst Christian faith may have facilitated the bonding with those who shared our faith - and those who imparted our faith, whether parents or teachers or ministers or all of the above - I don't feel that it facilitates connection with the world, nor does it satisfy our curiosity - if anything, Christian faith (perhaps any supernaturalist faith) tends to deaden curiosity.

 

But I digress. I think it is worth remembering that, having taken the major step of saying to ourselves, "I no longer believe in the Christian god" we are all, from the point of view of Christianity, atheists. Not believing in the 'one true god' is pretty much the same, effectively, to a believer, as not believing in any gods at all.

 

But that first step away from Christian faith is not the end of the road, nor, indeed, is embracing the idea that the universe is, ultimately, godless. Where you go from that point is what defines your worldview. I have, in previous posts to Ex-Christian.net, touched upon my own journey from Catholicism to deism to atheism to eventually realising that I am - and have probably always been - a pantheist (of the naturalistic variety). I don't think that atheism, as such, has ever been intended to offer anything other than a different perspective to theism. After all, atheism is something that scientism has in common with Buddhism, but probably the only thing they have in common!

 

I think there certainly is a branch of the atheist community (a large and apparently popular branch, at that) that sees atheism almost as a duty to disparage anything that isn't supported by hard empirical evidence. But I think it has to be said that if hardline atheists are unable to separate spiritual experience (however one might define that) from mythical structures, they take their lead from the faithful, who are likewise unable to separate the two. The very term 'spiritual' tends to conjure dualistic ideas of a supernatural entity that has never been demonstrated to exist, but which is supposed to inhabit and somehow interact with our physical bodies.

 

But I'm not sure that the idea of transcendence, as understood by many religious believers, is something we can literally achieve in the sense that some part of ourselves is entirely independent of our earth-bound human experience. The kind of transcendence I now appreciate is the sense of being part of the natural universe, part of a vast evolutionary history that goes far beyond my own lifespan; and the sense of empathy and connection with others that comes from simply interacting with the world, knowing that my actions affect more than just myself.

 

That is just my take on transcendence, of course. There was a time when I would have found it a meagre consolation in comparison to believing that I have a supernatural soul that will outlast my physical death; but now I feel that my present perspective is infinitely more beautiful, for being so much more accessible.

[Legion]

I think you express yourself so well Sair.

[SairB]

In my opinion we must not allow religious people to appropriate the word 'faith' for their sole use. We must retake the word, and return it to a more foundational meaning.

 

Faith is believing something for which there is no known proof.

 

I have faith.

 

No, not in gods.

 

 

I certainly agree that the term 'faith' has been misappropriated by organised religions, and probably unduly spurned by the 'New Atheist' movement. Both seem to think that having faith in anything is a sign that you are open to belief in supernatural entities...

[SairB]

Yes, but the foundation for the word "faith", both in colloquial use and in religion, is the concept of trust. A "strong belief" is a form of trust, to trust something to be true, even without the evidence for it to be true as a fact. Knowing something to be true isn't the same as having faith or believing something to be true. Having trust in someone or something usually comes from a history of experience, but it still comes down to believing. If a person constantly show to me that he or she is trustworthy, means that I trust the person to continue to be so, but can I know it for a fact? Not always. People can change or circumstance might cause them to act differently. So faith and trust are in the end a belief of very similar kind.

 

The really weird thing is that I have seen several Christians claim that they 'know' God will come through for them, and that it's not just faith. How they separate this supposed intuition from mere everyday confidence remains to be seen...

[SairB]

If you don't mind, I've moved this topic to the Colosseum as it is a very well written and thoughtful topic worthy of a place for serious discussion. I will be adding my own thoughts to this shortly as time permits. You raise excellent points and it's my hope this will be a strong discussion topic for everyone interested in this as you are.

 

Thank you! Far from minding, I am inclined to take this as a compliment. When I'm done reading the replies on Lion's Den, I'll check out the Colosseum. Cheers!

[Legion]

I certainly agree that the term 'faith' has been misappropriated by organised religions, and probably unduly spurned by the 'New Atheist' movement. Both seem to think that having faith in anything is a sign that you are open to belief in supernatural entities...

 

Right on Sair!

 

And the thing is... any philosopher worth his or her salt can tell you that we are awash in faith, assumptions, presuppositions, and a priori knowledge. Indeed the unyielding skeptic is essentially a solipsist who only acknowledges the existence of his own subjective experience.

 

Yes, I have faith in several ideas and many of these ideas reside at the foundations of scientific epistemology. If scientists find that philosophy is too ephemeral, and if philosophers find that science is too empirical then I think both are missing out on opportunities to expand our holdings of understanding.

[Antlerman]

I think we are actually hunting the same beast with different weapons.

That's interesting you say so. I hunt it to integrate a rational understanding into an experiential release. How so with you?

I'm still after the rational understanding.

That's cool. That's sort of the path I went in my "holy grail" search to attempt some sort of reconciliation of 'faith and reason' as I understood it then. I came to see rational grounds to pursue spiritual truths, but the key is that reason and rationality cannot penetrate it. You cannot reason yourself into spiritual knowledge, as it is of a different order. Think of it like reasoning yourself into physical fitness. There is no amount of models you can create in your mind that impart what happens to you physically when you exercise. You have to actually do the activity, or do the experiment as it were. To truly understand what the spiritual is, you have to actually experience it, and I'll add not just in small fleeting moments but in full immersion. All I can say is as involved, and as detailed, and as rational as what I try to lay out intellectually in explaining it, all of that utterly pales in comparison to actually experiencing it.

 

Bottom line, reason can only take you so far as to say, "I can see it is reasonable", but it cannot impart content. You won't get it by thinking about it. So my long road in trying to reconcile 'reason and spirituality' I would say did and didn't happen. You can't reconcile them directly as they are of different categories of experience. But you can integrate them into a rational worldspace. I guarantee I'm not in any sort of cognitive dissonance.

[SairB]

Oops...hadn't realised I was already in the Colosseum - jumped in from yesterday's saved session

 

One thing that occurs to me, that I find somewhat distasteful about Christianity - and perhaps other religious traditions, although I'm obviously much less familiar with them - is the assumption of certainty, and the accompanying belief that certainty is desirable and even necessary. It seems to me that the minute you decide you know exactly how and why some phenomenon obtains (let's say consciousness, for example, and the supposition that it exists because of an immaterial soul) you cut yourself off from the possibility of discovery.

 

Ironically, when it comes to things like consciousness and souls and such, believers are inclined to argue that as long as you cannot be certain that souls don't exist, and that consciousness isn't a supernatural phenomenon, then they are justified in believing that such things are the work of their god.

 

To be fair, though, I think some hardline atheists are just as guilty of assuming certainty where there is none.

 

My take on the whole natural/supernatural divide is that, as long as we don't know everything there is to know about the universe - how it works and what are its capabilities (and that may well be our condition for as long as we exist as a species), then it seems premature to divide reality into two subsets, as if we understood the limits of each. Reality is reality, and we are already aware of the existence of those phenomena we would call 'natural' or 'physical'. To me, 'supernatural' seems to be just a catch-all term for things that we experience in some sense, but don't (yet) understand. It seems arrogant, somehow, to suppose that we know what these things are, enough to classify them as fundamentally different from natural phenomena...

[Antlerman]

The positive I see with atheism is that it advances reason and rationality, which is good and necessary in our evolution, by breaking apart the mythic structures of our historical past to help move us into a rational worldspace. Rightly so. The negative, is that it throws out the baby with the bathwater. It is unable to separate out genuine and valid spiritual experience from mythical structures. It therefore fails as a valid system of reason. It fails Reason itself. Atheism in the modern context instead becomes more a radical iconoclasm, a smashing of the old idols without any sort of integral vision of the future. I would say that atheism is a minor tool at best. It should not ignorantly seek the destruction of spirituality (which it cannot), but of the old mythic structures the spiritual in is unfortunately still currently tied to it. (There are reasons that is so). But atheism itself has no ultimate vision of human experience for a future, which of necessity must include what has existed and does exist within it from the beginning.

 

I agree, largely, but with the modification that atheism is a starting position, rather than an end position.

I was speaking in terms of neo-athiesm, which pretty much slams the door on all things God. Heck, what was it the astoundingly deep thinker, Richard Dawkins called Pantheism? Sexed up atheism? [/sarcasm] To me, that is placing atheism as the defining truth. There is no God, and anything that smacks of any type of theism is delusion, as he so famously made it a popular view to the world.

 

Where I agree with your statement I'll explain in a moment.

 

But I digress. I think it is worth remembering that, having taken the major step of saying to ourselves, "I no longer believe in the Christian god" we are all, from the point of view of Christianity, atheists. Not believing in the 'one true god' is pretty much the same, effectively, to a believer, as not believing in any gods at all.

 

But that first step away from Christian faith is not the end of the road, nor, indeed, is embracing the idea that the universe is, ultimately, godless. Where you go from that point is what defines your worldview.

And this is my point. Atheism, neo-atheism particularly is at best a response to the mythic-literal God of Christianity. It does not speak to Deity in other forms. I don't know that it is a necessary progression from Christianity into some other type of spiritual pursuit, but for myself and what sounds like for you, it went roughly like this: Theist; Septic; Athiest/Scientism; Post-Athiest Rationalist; Transrationalist, etc. My identification as atheist is only valid in reference to the Christian deity as a factual entity as defined by traditional Christian theist dogma. My understanding of theism now is very much along these lines:

 

"But this is not God as an ontological other, set apart from the cosmos, from humans, and from creation at large. Rather, it is God as an archetypal summit of one's own Consciousness. ... By visualizing that identification 'we actually do become the deity. The subject is identified with the object of faith. The worship, the worshiper, and the worshiped, those three are not separate'. At its peak, the soul becomes one, literally one, with the deity-form, with the dhyani-buddha, with (choose whatever term one prefers) God. One dissolves into Deity, as Deity - that Deity which, from the beginning, has been one's own Self or highest Archetype."

 

~Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye, pg. 86

 

I could go into lengths describing and talking about this, but I won't burden the discussion here. Again though, I don't know that atheism is a necessary step on the road from Christianity. For me it was necessary to get God out of the picture as they had their tendrils so entwined into Deity or the Divine, as to claim all things God were owned by them. To see the world without that in the picture was necessary for me personally. Then as I continued to develop the rational structures, I began to see the neo-atheism is itself just basically "Christianity without God". It's basically debating at the same level of defined reality; God/Not-God. Not how else might we understand God in human experience. It itself was dealing with God at the mythic-literal level, either accepting it or rejecting it.

 

I'll address a couple other points in your reply later on....

[Legion]

I like it when you say phenomena

I love it when you keep it real

And when you dis' the supernatural

I look for chance a kiss to steal

[Guest end3]

Which, again, is largely colloquial as well. Again, not to get too sidetracked on this, but it does make a point. It is like saying spirituality equals belief in mythological entities, the supernatural realm of ghosts and gods. But there is a valid spiritual sense of the word faith that is NOT mere belief. If we are to argue that it is the same, then religion in fact can be replaced by science and reason, which I flatly reject. In a truly spiritual sense of faith, which goes beyond reason - not against it - it has a value that no other system of belief offers, which takes us right back to the OP in this thread.

 

Again, I agree the terms get interchanged so much that to the so-called 'non-believer', or skeptic, or atheist, that faith is in fact evidence-based. And as such, clearly myth has got to take the back seat! But it is my contention that there is a human spiritual 'faith' in a non-evidence, non-cognitive, and non-rational sense that inuits "God", or Spirit, or whatever transcendent symbol you wish to call "That". That sense of faith is in fact beyond any belief systems. And that is something internal to humans in that heterachical sense I mentioned in my first post in this thread. It is experienced all the way down and all the way up, and is only replaced through direct experience with that which was intuited. The value then is to recognizing the difference and dialoging on that. See?

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Faith as being beyond facts, reason, experience, and facts? So faith is more than anything else that we have?

I didn't say that. Back to my first post in this thread where I touched on heterarchy and hierarchy. At any given level of understanding you have support structures that help you navigate that landscape. These are belief systems, worldviews, language systems, etc. As a child of 8 you have a certain set that works for 8 year olds. As a teen you have a different set. Now apply this to adults in an average-mode consciousness, a mode of thought that applies to the general population. There are structures in place to support that average mode consciousness. Those structures have changed over history as our general average-mode consciousness as a species has evolved.

 

What we had prior to the Enlightenment in the 1700's was a general mythic-mode of looking at the world. Myth structures were the supporting system, gods and supernatural forces controlled the cosmos and our individual fates. Prior to this in was magic-modes of understanding the world, forces controlled by unseen threads connected to our own selves. There were structures in place to support this mode of consciousness, rites, rituals, etc. Now in an average-mode consciousness that generally sees the world in rational structures, we have systems of belief that support this, until the next shift comes along, etc.

 

Now faith is something in all these levels that intuits something beyond those structures. Not a new higher structure per se', not a new average-mode consciousness, but the existence of what is undefinable in its very essence. It is an existential awareness of something that transcends all beliefs, all systems, all knowledge, all reasoning and rational understanding. But no, faith itself is not above everything we have, because it is itself an intuition, not an apprehension. The apprehension of what faith intuits is what is beyond all beliefs and understanding. It is the existential Self. It is all Truth, without being any one thing. It is a state of conscious awareness not bound to any thought or model of mind. That's what is beyond faith. Faith is only a sense, a pull, a draw, an internal 'force' for lack of a better word. It is not the Goal and itself does not offer knowledge.

 

This is the other use of faith. So you can see, it is not belief in anything other than the yet unrealized.

 

Didn't actually think I would miss visiting with you yahoos, but....I did.

 

The thought that comes to mind is that the structure is more permanent that you give it credit for. I would think that the "conciousness" laid upon the structure(s) are constantly becoming the structure......................again, that it is set rather than wishy-washy.....although I believe foundations can indeed crumble. So, with that, you ultimately have one foundation that remains. You are welcome to see the Christianity in that if you so desire : ) .

 

Glad to be back. Like a breath of relaxation.....

[Guest end3]

And to the topic: faith is looking towards the lasting, solid structure formed on the priciples of righteousness and life......even though the structure has been built and consists of layers of different languages, cultures, etc.

[Guest end3]

And let me please add.....at some point the structure that has been built, the layers become fixed but"dead" in that their functionality still exists, yet these people themselves have "died". Hence the christian-eze: "die to self".

 

Also, if you look at the OT, it would make sense that God is building a righteous structure......hence the Law and those people willing to start a righteous foundation. Noah, Moses....

 

 

So essentially you have a predestined foundation in that righteousness is what promotes life and will ultimately stand even though you have free will on the surface, those that are making decisions every day whether to lay themselfs in with the righteous tree or become an knot that might make their limb break off.

 

Good stuff.

[par4dcourse]

 

Bottom line, reason can only take you so far as to say, "I can see it is reasonable", but it cannot impart content. You won't get it by thinking about it. So my long road in trying to reconcile 'reason and spirituality' I would say did and didn't happen. You can't reconcile them directly as they are of different categories of experience. But you can integrate them into a rational worldspace. I guarantee I'm not in any sort of cognitive dissonance.

 

There is our basic difference. I'm looking within while you're looking without. I think reason, rationality, and science will eventually "prove" all things considered supernatural to be quite natural after all, originating in the gray matter. We understand only a fraction of what the brain can do.

I don't call what I do meditating, but I am capable of taking a mental "step back" to examine what I'm thinking and why, and why I'm having experienced emotions. I also lucid dream almost at will, but it's all in my skull. Maybe I'll eventually progress beyond, but so far, there's enough of us in my head already.

[Antlerman]

 

Bottom line, reason can only take you so far as to say, "I can see it is reasonable", but it cannot impart content. You won't get it by thinking about it. So my long road in trying to reconcile 'reason and spirituality' I would say did and didn't happen. You can't reconcile them directly as they are of different categories of experience. But you can integrate them into a rational worldspace. I guarantee I'm not in any sort of cognitive dissonance.

 

There is our basic difference. I'm looking within while you're looking without.

Thats a strange response. It's actually exactly opposite with you looking externally. I'll explain more later when on not typing on phone. Think about what you said in the mean time. Meditation is looking within.

[Antlerman]

The thought that comes to mind is that the structure is more permanent that you give it credit for. I would think that the "conciousness" laid upon the structure(s) are constantly becoming the structure......................again, that it is set rather than wishy-washy.....although I believe foundations can indeed crumble. So, with that, you ultimately have one foundation that remains. You are welcome to see the Christianity in that if you so desire : ) .

I agree with this only to the point that the conscious is embedded within the current structure in its developmental path. That structure is in fact quite much a part of what constitutes reality for that person. But as the person evolves, the structure is replaced with a new structure. So it is relatively permanent for as long as it supports that person's developmental stage. Once they have evolved to a new level, then that structure is replaced.

 

Christianity is a structure, I'll grant this. I outgrew it. It cannot support me in its mythic-literal structures for mythic-literal thinking.

[Antlerman]

And to the topic: faith is looking towards the lasting, solid structure formed on the priciples of righteousness and life......even though the structure has been built and consists of layers of different languages, cultures, etc.

I'm not sure I would say this. Faith is drawn towards higher realization, and with that comes new higher support structures. At a state of Absolute Mind, then it's like saying God has support structures. I AM. Truth that all truths a part of. As far as principles of righteousness, I don't deny higher morality results in this, but they are not superimposed in some sort of external law. Doesn't your own Bible say that in that day God's law is written on the tablets of the heart? Morality is the natural outflowing of a heart connected to the Absolute, which defies structures and boundaries.

[Antlerman]

And let me please add.....at some point the structure that has been built, the layers become fixed but"dead" in that their functionality still exists, yet these people themselves have "died". Hence the christian-eze: "die to self".

 

Also, if you look at the OT, it would make sense that God is building a righteous structure......hence the Law and those people willing to start a righteous foundation. Noah, Moses....

 

 

So essentially you have a predestined foundation in that righteousness is what promotes life and will ultimately stand even though you have free will on the surface, those that are making decisions every day whether to lay themselfs in with the righteous tree or become an knot that might make their limb break off.

 

Good stuff.

Children need to be told what is good and bad. Mature adults don't. I liken the external law business of those practicing Christians as still being a child. It is not internalized for them. To the OP, I believe that atheism actually is a step forward to finding Love in themselves. They choose to act with goodness because it suits their character, and because it is not imposed upon them by some external threatening Sky Parent, it is genuine. Children are largely incapable of choosing morally as an adult. They need external laws still. So atheism is more righteous, because it is morality of complete free will.

[Antlerman]

Bottom line, reason can only take you so far as to say, "I can see it is reasonable", but it cannot impart content. You won't get it by thinking about it. So my long road in trying to reconcile 'reason and spirituality' I would say did and didn't happen. You can't reconcile them directly as they are of different categories of experience. But you can integrate them into a rational worldspace. I guarantee I'm not in any sort of cognitive dissonance.

 

There is our basic difference. I'm looking within while you're looking without. I think reason, rationality, and science will eventually "prove" all things considered supernatural to be quite natural after all, originating in the gray matter. We understand only a fraction of what the brain can do.

 

I don't call what I do meditating, but I am capable of taking a mental "step back" to examine what I'm thinking and why, and why I'm having experienced emotions. I also lucid dream almost at will, but it's all in my skull. Maybe I'll eventually progress beyond, but so far, there's enough of us in my head already.

To why what you said is the exact opposite, that I look internally and you look externally for truth and understanding. To examine something from the outside is to be looking at something, not experiencing it directly. Science is an objective evaluation of data using the mind. Spiritual experience is the opposite. It is going within beyond words and models into the nature of being itself. Without that understanding, you can never have the data to look at or talk about it. It's like never looking through a telescope and wildly speculating about the cosmos, even though your logic may seem impeccable.

 

The fact you said you are capable of taking a mental step back, means you are still operating within the mental structures I spoke about earlier. You can certainly look at ensuing external behaviors of spiritual experience and make mental models as to what they might mean or what is the source, but without direct experimentation you have to say the least as much data as someone never looking through a telescope does about the cosmos.

 

Does it originate in brain matter? Does your physical body?

[Guest end3]

And to the topic: faith is looking towards the lasting, solid structure formed on the priciples of righteousness and life......even though the structure has been built and consists of layers of different languages, cultures, etc.

I'm not sure I would say this. Faith is drawn towards higher realization, and with that comes new higher support structures. At a state of Absolute Mind, then it's like saying God has support structures. I AM. Truth that all truths a part of. As far as principles of righteousness, I don't deny higher morality results in this, but they are not superimposed in some sort of external law. Doesn't your own Bible say that in that day God's law is written on the tablets of the heart? Morality is the natural outflowing of a heart connected to the Absolute, which defies structures and boundaries.

 

You're killing me Smalls. I see higher realization is being further joined with the structure of collective truth. You and I would be embedded in the wood of the tree, supporting those that are the "new growth". Ours is one of becoming stronger in the things that we know as more close to absolute truth than for example, a small limb being blown back an forth. Certainly it could be relative, but only if there were competing Absolutes.

 

You had said earlier that humanity is moving toward good......and I think my statement supports what you had said earlier. Again, layer of good is what builds the structure that our relativity rests on.

 

Remember we are only manifestations of the Absolute. I AM, but I am only in part.

[Guest end3]

And let me please add.....at some point the structure that has been built, the layers become fixed but"dead" in that their functionality still exists, yet these people themselves have "died". Hence the christian-eze: "die to self".

 

Also, if you look at the OT, it would make sense that God is building a righteous structure......hence the Law and those people willing to start a righteous foundation. Noah, Moses....

 

 

So essentially you have a predestined foundation in that righteousness is what promotes life and will ultimately stand even though you have free will on the surface, those that are making decisions every day whether to lay themselfs in with the righteous tree or become an knot that might make their limb break off.

 

Good stuff.

Children need to be told what is good and bad. Mature adults don't. I liken the external law business of those practicing Christians as still being a child. It is not internalized for them. To the OP, I believe that atheism actually is a step forward to finding Love in themselves. They choose to act with goodness because it suits their character, and because it is not imposed upon them by some external threatening Sky Parent, it is genuine. Children are largely incapable of choosing morally as an adult. They need external laws still. So atheism is more righteous, because it is morality of complete free will.

 

No, when morality of "complete free will" is assumed, then they become enlign with the past generations of truth, pushing humanity towards a moral absolute. Why would children need external laws if humanity didn't?

[Guest end3]

Pardon the gross error.....aligned would be the correct word....hopefully.

[SairB]

I was speaking in terms of neo-athiesm, which pretty much slams the door on all things God. Heck, what was it the astoundingly deep thinker, Richard Dawkins called Pantheism? Sexed up atheism? [/sarcasm] To me, that is placing atheism as the defining truth. There is no God, and anything that smacks of any type of theism is delusion, as he so famously made it a popular view to the world.

 

It's interesting to me that Dawkins has come to be portrayed in the media as someone with a very simplistic and dismissive attitude to belief - as someone who is essentially missing the point of religion and just saying, "I don't get it, therefore it's invalid." This hasn't been my impression at all. Although of late he has certainly blotted his copybook by prominently displaying his upper-middle-class white hetero male privilege, having read a couple of his books and also heard him speak (will be doing the latter again in about a month) I actually felt greatly inspired by his approach to finding hope, gratitude and a sense of wonder in a world without deities. There are plenty of internet atheists out there who claim that it's "just" the lack of belief in gods, but for me, atheism is in fact a positive affirmation that the universe is godless, and is all the more beautiful and amazing for being so, as well as making a whole lot more sense. To experience the divine not as a relationship with an anthropomorphic personal being, a projection of our own consciousness, but as a sense of connection with the universe that creates, sustains and destroys us, all with glorious indifference - that, to me, is pantheism. Is this sexed-up atheism? Perhaps so.

 

 

I don't know that atheism is a necessary step on the road from Christianity. For me it was necessary to get God out of the picture as they had their tendrils so entwined into Deity or the Divine, as to claim all things God were owned by them. To see the world without that in the picture was necessary for me personally. Then as I continued to develop the rational structures, I began to see the neo-atheism is itself just basically "Christianity without God". It's basically debating at the same level of defined reality; God/Not-God. Not how else might we understand God in human experience. It itself was dealing with God at the mythic-literal level, either accepting it or rejecting it.

 

There certainly is a tendency in the major religions to appropriate all experiences of the divine as an affirmation of "their" god's existence - I remember the idea, which now seems disturbingly imperialist to me, that people who had never heard of the Christian god (as, for example, the Australian Aborigines prior to European invasion) were really worshipping him, but just calling him the wrong name. And yes, there certainly is a marked propensity, particularly among internet atheists, to run screaming from suggestions that maybe we need some sense of 'spiritual' connection. I did hear a wonderful talk about the idea of atheist spirituality from Ian Robinson at the 2010 Global Atheist Convention (pardon my taking the opportunity to link to my own blog!) in which he basically said that spirituality is about finding the essence of what it is to be human in the world as we experience it. Certainly, our experiences of the divine, whatever they may be, are real things that impact upon our lives and demand exploration and explanation - even if they are ultimately the result of electrical impulses in the brain.