kiljoy

Reading DustinTheBeard's post in the Christians group about the fact he's leaving SG due to the fact he's found God recently and his therefore adherence to his understanding of the 10th commandment (You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.) makes me thankful that I am an Atheist. I don't have that much against faith or belief in a supernatural deity or deities (I do have a little against it but we won't go into that right now) as long as that faith and belief is personal and internalised,

I have many religious and spiritual friends whose relationship with their higher power(s) is a complex and largely inexplainable force that to them seems instinctual yet not actually emanating from them (although I think differently about this), but they choose to feel their connection to 'God' rather than read it out of a book or be told it by another.

With these people I've had long, intense yet respectful debates about creation, purpose, meaning, humanity, animal rights, sexuality etc. and how these subjects pertain to their faith or spiritual ideals. But it is when I see somebody such as DustinTheBeard's recent comments about faith I am saddened that someone's intellect and spiritual understanding can be so shackled and blinkered by dogma.

God is a rationalisation of our abstract spiritual experience, which is innately part of the human condition, but this is ultimately flawed due to the fact that the abstract can never be rationalised, and I think it is true when they say that man can never understand 'God', but why then have we written books, codes of social and moral law, carved idols, sacrificed living and inanimate, executed, crusaded, sung songs, gone to war... all in God's name? Wouldn't you say that's just a little presumptuous?

I choose to feel my own spirituality (yes, I'm a spiritual atheist) as my own source of abstract existence. It is mine, not a God's, and I don't need to rationalise it directly but let it push me into new ideas and feelings. It is the part of me that cries and laughs, it is the part of me that is filled with awe at the sight of beauty in nature, it is the part of me that wants to cuddle gently but then fuck like a beast... It is mine, I don't need to give it a name, I have a personal relationship with it and sometimes I choose not to follow the direction it leads, it doesn't think, it only feels. But... It is me.



Please debate....