Letters to the Editor
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Choose the name of your invisable friend carefully
Need an invisible friend who's always going to love you support you what ever you do and add warm fuzzy meaning to your life?
Just make sure your invisible friend has the same name as other people's invisible friend. Jesus, Mohammed, Shiva, Odin...that way you can join groups of friends and have a "religion".
Choose one that's not popular and you'll looked upon as insane and prescribed drugs, therapy or worse.
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I don't know
For me being an atheist brings with it the necessity of facing the words "I don't know" every day. Those are some of the most powerful words you can say, because from them comes the desire to question. I think questioning is at the heart of our humanity.
They are also difficult words to face, but I think from your letter you know that not to face them is a cop out.
People often conflate religion, spirituality and morality. The three are different things, maybe you are looking for the last two.
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Does it matter if you do or don't believe?
I don't.
But if I wanted to I would. It seems nice. I have religious friends. (I'm not one of those atheists who thinks themselves superior to theists because I'm too smart to be duped, or something) I find their ability to have faith astounding. I think it's an amazing bit of comfort and love and community and...humanity.
Let's face it. Humans do love the idea of a God. It's sort of a thing we do.
So why not? Who does it hurt? It seems to be quite helpful to many people who believe. Ok, so it sounds ridiculous to me when I hear "God helped me get that promotion" when I think it was actually hard work and tenacity, but God gets no blame when the house blows down in a tornado.
But that's none of my business. That's one person's relationship with God.
I think if I were to start believing the most exciting part would be coming up with my own relationship with God. How nice!
Frankly, sometimes I wish it were possible for me to have faith in something bigger.
Somewhere in the book of Paul, I think (not only am I an atheist, but I used to be Jewish, so my knowledge of the New Testament is fairly thin.) where its mentioned that the ability to have faith is a gift itself. I think this is where the whole concept of predestination came from...that God only allowed some people to have faith, and others would never be able to, and would HAVE to go to hell because they were incapable of faith...thus believers could understand that even their ability to believe and save themselves was a gift.
Ok, that's kind of a messed-up story. I mean, who wants the God who says "So, like, some of you are gonna HAVE to go to hell because I said so, just as a foil for everyone else to realize that just the CHANCE to not go to hell is pretty spiffy."
But since I'm not a believer I don't have to see it that way. ;) I see it this way: Faith...the ability to have faith IS a gift. And a powerful one that connects you to others in a mysterious and special secretive way. It allows for discussion and inventory of mystical and imaginary things. It allows people to bond over shared premises and theories and concepts founded out of nothing more than their own gut, and needing nothing more to prove themselves than that either.
And I know other atheists find these the very reason to scorn theism...but I think it's fantastic. Frankly, I feel a little left out. I can see how having that ability would be intensely gratifying and helpful...the ability to say "I give it up to God." itself...goodness I think if I could say that sometimes my blood pressure might drop 50 points right then and there, and I might be afforded enough momentary comfort to gain some perspective and clarity on the situation.
(Yeah, that's how an atheist sees it. So? I still don't get to enjoy it.)
So go for it. Enjoy your gift of faith. Make it a good one!
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Why fetishize the mainstream categories of faith?
I think what you are finding is that you have closed off a part of your mind - the very thing most of us are avoiding by declaring ourselves atheists. You need to reopen it and find what there is to find there - not let some outside authority tell you there isn't anything there. I still don't believe in a deity of any sort, but the diehard atheists who think logic is the only true religion don't appeal to me in the least. I believe in love, intuition and lots of other things that logic doesn't explain. And if logic could explain them, I wouldn't give a damn one way or the other about why I was experiencing them.
Spirituality is about personal experience, and you don't have to try to fit your experiences into a pigeonhole. But you do have to let yourself HAVE spiritual experiences, or you will remain depressed. I am a pretty loyal materialist (I don't think I have a separable soul that will depart upon my death and go somewhere else), but that doesn't mean that spiritual experience isn't real. In fact, it is universal and probably just part of our neurophysiology. But it doesn't have to be explained or even explicable, as far as I am concerned. You need to stop fetishizing the categories and open your own heart to your own beliefs. You will probably find that you are still basically an atheist, but that doesn't require that you cling to someone else's definition of what that means. What are they going to do, anyway? Excommunicate you?
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George Carlin had a nice answer...
...when asked if the natural consequences of his atheism bothered him, Carlin apparently said something along the lines of "we come from stardust, and to stardust we'll return, and that's good enough for me."
Not a thorough answer, but not a bad one either, for an adult-type person.