GOD OF OUR FATHERS; WHO ARE 'WE?"

I don't know about Atheists, although my best and oldest friend is dyed-in-that-wool. If ATHIEST means someone sees NOTHING unknowable, DENIES ANY force beyond human imagination, outside of time, distance and space. but i respect them, as most are highly intelligent--AND-- give a lot of thought to these things. As do I. There is not a problem with application of thought and reaching different conclusions.

There IS a problem with giving NO thought and reaching conclusions based on fantasy, disregard of facts, taking the word of the uninformed, or giving up ones intellect to the stream of flow of another, when there is no reason to doso--except "faith"-- when there are facts and data available and given to work with. This type of blind following lease to executions for heresy, e.g., the earth is not flat and the sun does not revolve around the earth and the Bible is not history in a literal sense. When you get there, you are just being an idiot.

I guess its easier to be an--- I don't know Agnostic?

But whatever the ease of ingestion, I find myself reading the TAO de CHING, and the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and resonating with the plain sense of the Dali Lama's writing. I am certain there are others, Lord Krishna  Jesus, Muhammed,-- all with valuable messages. All, to one degree or another, real or made up.

However, unlike people waving around a book created by the Catholic Church (with lots of good allegory) not at all long ago, claiming to have all the answers-- or similar action by other organized religions, Abrahamic or not. Just bc we realize Jesus is an amalgamated myth, made up from several Greek and predecessor saviors, and just because we do not believe in a "God" as generally described in the various Abrahamic texts, does NOT mean we are not deeply spiritual.

I do not believe the Earth is flat, the Sun revolves around us, that we are holy or special in a religious sense, that we are the only life-supporting place in the unimaginable forever of galaxy after galaxy within universe after universe, forever without limits. I do not believe all is described in a book, written a millisecond ago, in cosmic time. If you do, and see it as literal and not allegorical or representative, what can one say?

Nor does it at all mean "WE" (we who feel the force of the unknowable TAO, but cannot know what it is, where it is from or where it carries us--or for what purposes--) that WE do not recognize the ultimate presence of something which we cannot comprehend, giving cause to that which we see and experience, but cannot possibly understand. It certainly does not mean we do not acknowledge and consider and probe the unknowable First Cause of that which, interestingly,  has no need for the idea of First Cause as it always Was.

It does not at all mean WE don't understand the allegorical value of stuff written over the last few thousand years. The Samaritan. The water to wine. The arising in three days and eternal life. The last supper. Inclusion of prostitutes, destitute brothers and sisters, poor, lepers, prisoners....We very well get the idea of Jesus teaching inclusion, kindness, equality, forgiveness, care of the sick and poor; we get the allegory of Moses and his lessons; adventures and the truth of the "Ten Commandments"-- we might have trouble with the burning bushes, or the wafting of pleasant smells of burnt bullock offerings, or 900 year old guys impregnating their daughters, as being important, but we see and search and understand.

To the contrary of what Bible thumpers think, we are quite spiritual. Most people, like me, who search their souls and the mysteries of the known, regularly...who study, consider and think deeply about the origins of that which cannot be known...TAOists, Buddhists, Naturists, and others, O feel are far more attuned to the actual "God" presence in the flowers, the colors, seasons, inevitabilities and mysteries of our existence, than are those who, because of what a book says, claim to have all the answers.

And nowadays, as I watch the hatred of the races, gays, women, pretend-piety, worship of money, war and mechanized killing in the name of good, murder and dismembering and terror in the name of one Abrahamic sect against another-- what other conclusions could logically be reached?

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