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Date Posted: 14:13:07 02/14/08 Thu
Author: manwitch
Subject: Some of my best friends are atheists
In reply to: Sunshine 's message, "A Problem with Atheists?" on 09:58:12 02/13/08 Wed

I make generalizations based on my observations. Does that make my generalizations "scientific?" I suspect not.

I think I also was using a different definition of "religious" than you claim to be using.

At any rate, we may be talking about different things. I'm talking about the belief Spike shows in Showtime. I would say that yes, at that point, its not a rational belief. It is pure faith.

Also, there is a history to my comments that others couldn't possibly know. I used to post here, and about three years ago or so, I was doing a series of posts on Buffy's Spiritual Journey, and after the last one I was contacted by another poster who questioned whether or not I really believed that the religious imagery and spiritual themes I talked about were there, given that Joss was an atheist. And if they were, wasn't it more likely that Joss was doing what would sell rather than sending some kind of message about belief which as an atheist he would scorn.

I said yes its there, and yes Joss is using it to tell a story about spiritual belief. Its just that the source of that belief is us and the object of it is us.

Anyways, that's probably why I phrased it the way I did. I have nothing against atheists. As I have said before, many years ago, I think they suffer from the same literary problem that the believers suffer from. They just manifest it as disbelief rather than belief. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me otherwise. God is a literary device. Its a sign that has not only the denotative referent but also the connotative one. To build an identity around belief or disbelief in the denotative referent of a metaphor seems to me to be reflective of one's literary skill.

No offense intended to anyone. There's a lot of wiggle room here. That's just the general framework from which I view the question. I don't believe in the historical claims of Christ or Yahweh, or the claims made on their behalf that are unsupporte or disproved by modern science. I guess that makes me an atheist. But there is perhaps more to them than historical and scientific claims. Perhaps?

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