I come from a Christian background, though I have come to see that every tradition has something of truth and beauty to offer, including atheism. I’ve also come to see that that which bothers me in the area of belief is dogma, which to me is the refusal to allow your spirit to evolve, but not so much dogma as those who active try to “infect” others with their particular brand of it.

And again, I see that coming out of most traditions (some more than others), and atheism actually seems to be one tradition is most visibly dogmatic to me.

Just some thoughts.

Nicely spoken. It is a topic I ponder fairly regularly. I put off spiritual housekeeping, but my marriage to a religiously observant person forced me to do some work. I think I fall somewhere between agnostic and atheist and obviously have more housekeeping to do to figure out what I think.

Several things stand out for me. First, this is great if there weren’t a political aspect to the religious/atheist conflict. As long as political decisions are being based on the moral value set defined by a specific interpretation of religion, the debate is not just philosophical or even one of trying to convert. It affects people’s lives legally.

On another front, why is there need to convert people to atheism? If people want to believe whatever they want, fine. If a set of dogma becomes too unbelievable or the message of the existence of a god fails to resonate, then a person may develop his or her own atheist understanding of the world. In the mean time, what good would it do to confront people who have other beliefs? I think it would only act to strengthen those beliefs in opposition.

There has to be some balance between letting people use religious convictions to make federal laws and trying to convert them all to an atheist world-view. Perhaps the seeds of this are in the Constitution and other founding documents.

As always, I enjoy reading your blog. Keep it up.

I also like Josh’s comments about not wanting to deny a sense of wonder. “Materialist” does tend to suggest some sort of “it’s easy, just measure it!” kind of attitude, and this is definitely not my belief. I love the complexity of the universe, I don’t think it’s simple at all.

As for the political issues that Beth and Kynthia touch upon… I think I’m more and more convinced that strong freedom of religion is more important than convincing anyone of my particular faith. I want there to be information about core atheist beliefs available (and there is plenty), but I really don’t feel like I have to convince anyone of them. The only thing that gets my blood boiling is when someone starts talking about forcing their religion on others, be it through fascism, terrorism, etc. If all religious people accepted the notion that non-believers were only risking their own souls and are not, say, causing the US to lose troops in Iraq because of tolerance for gay marriage… we’d be much better off. Indeed, I’d venture that we wouldn’t be in Iraq anyway.

FWIW, I don’t like the term “materialist.” First, it sounds too much like materialistic; although this is the civic religion of our united states, it’s not a belief system I care to sound like I follow. Second, it seems to limit legitimate discussion to those things that can be quantified and measured, and that strikes me as too limiting. If you assume all we know is what we can measure then you deny those things that exist but cannot be measured. We have so much to learn about humanity and the universe, surely the huge gaps in our knowledge can be filled by hypothesis, speculation, and metaphysical exploration. Think of atomic physics 100 years ago–they suspected something was there, but they surely couldn’t measure it as material. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, even if there’s nothing to what I’m trying to type here. This is why I don’t have a blog, but I do enjoy reading yours.

i wouldn’t call it materialism, though. that name is already taken. and i think it would be a waste of precious energy to fend off the mudslinging about how you want to found a religion based on ipods and designer jeans.
;)