LW, I think you have received many fine answers here. For me, I was most puzzled by your equating a lack of belief in God with a corresponding total denial of a spiritual existence. I see the two as completely separate things. I'm sure you know at least one person (I know many) who can pelt you relentlessly with chapter and verse scripture and yet still they don't seem to have a spiritual bone in their body.

I am an atheist, too, but honestly who can say if there is a god or not? Not with any certainty I can't. Being an atheist only means you've stated your lack of belief. It doesn't make it true. That's when atheists become annoying and stupid; when they dogmatically assert that they are privy to the real inside scoop, that their awesome powers of logic and reason have provided all the answers.

I reject the concept that god is written down in a book as a set of rules that need to be followed, or else! But when I look around at the world and see the connections between things, how it all holds together, and when I realize that I am nothing but a mass of molecules that are somehow imbued with the ability contemplate whether there is a god or not. All that is too amazing. Maybe it is all just a natural process that somehow worked itself out, but even then you have to be awed, I think, by all the million in one chances that had to come into play to make it happen.

That awe and amazement is what I view as the spiritual existence; any atheist who shuts himself/herself off to it completely, saying it all adds up to nothing, has set themselves up for a needlessly bleak life.

I think it boils down to this: The quicker you lose the idea that atheism means that you have all the answers that are possible, the sooner you can start to look at the world in a different way and perhaps find the solace that you are beginning to seek. Looking for those answers does not make you a hypocrite, which I think may be much of what lies at the core of your question.

Not three minutes before reading this strip, I had just returned from the co-op where I had been lured into buying several delicious looking peaches. Mmmm-mmmm!

It's like this: When The Sixth Sense first came out, no one really knew that much about it. I saw it the first day and was caught off-guard by the end, and I really enjoyed that. A day or two later, I was at work, and a coworker said that she was going to see the movie that night, she was really excited to see it. I said, "Good, I really enjoyed that movie."

Another coworker came up and asked what we were talking about. I said "Sally is going to see The Sixth Sense tonight." So this new coworker sort of yawns and bluntly says, "Oh. That. Blurt blurt blurt blurt." He just gives away the ending, then walks away! It was one of the most asshole things I've ever seen. I'm not kidding, I was very close to punching him. Hard. "Sally" (not her real name) just stood there, stunned by his complete assholiness. Here in this letter, I still won't say how the movie ends, even though I'm sure it's not such a big secret anymore. I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might still be in the dark and could have the same experience I did.

So that's where I'm at with Potter. I don't want to hear anything until that moment of perfect revealing. But I also know that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of total assholes out there who just can't wait to piss all over everyone's good time. Why? I don't know. Does it make them feel important? Could their pathetic lives really be that sad and useless? For Gods sakes, just wait for the book! I mean, really? Dude? You had nothing better to do than photograph a 700 page book a page at a time? Really? Wow. You have an advance copy, and you're not even reading it? Wow. You might as well be dead, if that's all you've got going on.

I'm not married. I don't know about God forgiving me, but I believe I'm forgiven, so it's the exact same thing. But without a wife to forgive me, I'm basically hosed.

Damn.

I hear your words, and I know they are true. Can't catch my breath. Walls, closing in. I'm trapped! Trapped! Like a rat in a.. in a... rat trap! No way out. No hope, no succor. I hear a car... coming up the street now. Do I hear it stopping? Have they come for me? I am so so so so terribly hosed.

Mother of God! Is this the end of Rico?