Forwarded message:

From: Matthew James Gering <mgering@ecosystems.net> Subject: RE: Democracy... Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 11:00:09 -0700

Unless you can show me a religion that does not involve a god or gods, and although etymologically unjustified I would claim one that does not involve *faith*, then I would say you could NOT be both an atheist and religious. Agnostic perhaps, but not an atheist. You can be contradictory and hypocritical and claim you are many things, but we are talking about a coherent philosophy.

Try pantheism. If one fundamentaly believes that god does not exist, which clearly involves faith, then yes it is a religion. A religion is a belief system that provides a relationship between the individual and the totality of all else (the cosmos if you'll allow me). By your view an agnostic can't be religion since it is the recognition of a *lack* of faith, clearly something you require to be religous. An atheist says that god could exist but doesn't - clearly an act of faith. There are fundamentaly two types of religions, those that recognize some for of transcendance and those that don't. Quibbling over what is the 'correct' form of transcendence is as irrelevant as arguing over the 'correct' religion. In either case the same failure to understand human psychology is committed. In short it is the axiomatic assumption that there *is* a single anything that will satisfy everyone.

You can be both spiritual and an atheist. Spirituality does not require faith in any external mystical element or being.

What do you mean by 'spiritual'? Are you refering to a ghost-in-the-machine either at the individual or cosmological level? Whether one believes that mystical element is external (which if you understood God would clearly be seen to be a non sequitar with the rest of your argument) or internal is irrelevant. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------