I'm a little late to the party, so this may already have been covered. But Cary, dammit, why did you have to throw your little personal believer condescension in at the end? Your advice was really good up to that point.

Then you had to regurgitate your version of "God exists whether we believe in him or not." Essentially telling the LW he was full of crap and loved by the sky-daddy at the same time. Way to contradict yourself!

This is the problem we atheists and agnostics face every day. People look at us with "knowing" glances, as if we are wounded or somehow need to be let in on the cosmic joke. In fact, we have made a very conscious choice to *not* live our lives as if there was some grand intelligence or plan, and finding the courage to face the reality of feeling alone in the universe is difficult enough without being constantly told that "it's OK, God even loves the atheists."

The man asked you how to handle his doubts, both socially and internally, and you essentially accused him of being naive. He was crying out to you for a lifeline, and though you advised him to be his authentic self, you just compounded his dilemma!

He was trying to make it OK to not know, to question and to wonder. Instead you had to tell him you actually DO in fact know, (hiding behind the disclaimer "I might be crazy, but I think it's possible") the universe has a spirit that takes care of you, that's going to bathe you in love (like a dog), and it doesn't matter about those pesky doubts. How sickeningly smug all spiritual believers are, whether explicitly religious or not!

Let me turn this around to show you how it feels--what a true agnostic or atheist actually has to come to terms with--a journey you seem to fail to grasp, a question you seem loathe to face:

"Cary, I really think it's possible that the universe is a totally indifferent and inhospitable place, it's so vast and beyond our comprehension that it just doesn't care what kind of teleology or spiritual identity we might wish to dream up. We remain bathed in the pointless randomness of our short lives on a tiny planet. And we must create whatever meaning we want for ourselves, by ourselves."

Feel better now?