Letters to the Editor
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Atheism is a religion...
Believing there is no God is as much of a leap of faith, as much of a belief system, as religion.
There is a middle road - agnosticism. Agnosticism means that neither the presence nor the absence of God has been proven. It leaves the door open to consider all of the mind- and space- and time-warping possibilities in between. It means that, somewhere in between belief and non-belief, between God (as God has been presented by organized religion throughout history) and no God, lies reality. It means that, as humans evolve, we discover more and more about our physical and non-physical universe (yay science!), and we correct prior mis-conceptions and form new ones (hopefully with the understanding that we only know what we know now and such newly-formulated conceptions may need adjustment at a later date due to future discoveries). Reality is an ever-changing, ever-expanding concept.
I am the same age as the LW and, similarly, I broke with organized religion years ago. I have zero faith that primitive men had more insight into what lies beyond than we do today. Primitive man just happened to be the first to employ new technology (the written word) to turn what was formerly folklore into "truth", and we've been stuck for centuries since.
(Joseph Campbell wondered what the story of God and the hereafter would be today if, as in the past, our belief grew out of folklore (which evolved based on experience, discovery, and advancement) instead of from reading a book, frozen in time, full of stagnant ideas. The evolution of the story was halted and, according to Campbell, the world has been going to hell in a handbasket since.)
But swinging to the other side of the pendulum didn't make sense to me, either. I've just never had any faith in the worm-food theory, and besides, I've had too many experiences (especially since my mother died) that cannot be explained by science or logic.
So, as I journey on through life, I believe that I do not know, and perhaps never will know, the truth about God, or faith, or any of it. But I am quite content in the knowledge that some day, hopefully not too soon, I will discover the wondrous truth myself. And that is enough for me.