We are Grey....

I find myself, again, at least in my own, self-important mind, caught between the more-or-less Christianity of my own beliefs, and the atheism of many of those I deal with. A longtime proponent of the "Don't-be-an-ass" school of interpersonal relations, I've decided to use my own, mostly dormant blog to work through my sleep-deprived musings, and not upset my wife.

Between Pandagon and Adventus, one can get quite an education, you know ;) But sometimes it requires me to act,er, speak, er, type. And now I'm going to violate my own principles, for neither fun nor profit. I must make an ass of myself by pointing out that religion in general, and even Christianity in particular,
has more to it than one big patriarchal power trip. Yeah, there's a lot of that to be found. Religion is human thought about the Divine. Patriarchy pervades human thought in the historical period. Why would we be able to filter it out from that one subset?
Because, ultimately, religion isn't about power. At least, not the way I was taught and believe and try to practice it. It's about humility.
It's about acknowledging that humans in general, and I in particular, are flawed, falible, imperfect beings. That we (and I) fail. If humans are the end-all and be-all, there's no hope (to me), because we can't get everything right all the time. We never will be able to. We're only human.


I've been accused of talking to atheists and telling them were they're wrong.
This is probably true. I do this because I disagree, and want to explain why I, personally, can't be an atheist. You know, rather than attack the people themselves as self-important fools damned to eternal hellfire. I'm not THAT big an ass. But I'm gonna outline why atheism is not for me, and therefore, not for everyone.
First, I've talked about this before, I think atheism leads to an unhealthy neglect of one's spiritual nature. This is natural, because atheism involves a denial of spirituality as a real phenomenon, preferring materialism.

Now, I find materialism a particularly unsatisfying philosophical position. I have issues with both the problem of numbers (Platonic forms if I never saw one!), and because it is impossible to do ethics in a strictly materialist framework. Materialism doesn't lend itself to ethics, because "good" and "evil" are abstract concepts. nary a particle of either if you demolish the universe to fundamental particles.

My third problem with atheism has to do with the nature of humans as imperfect, flawed beings. As I said above, we fail. None of us lives up to even what we think of as morality completely perfectly, all the time. In more religious terms, sin happens. Atheism, as far as I can tell, offers no method for addressing questions like sin, repentance, atonement, and rehabilitation.

Now, some of these objections are probably based on my own ignorance of the subtle nuances of current atheist thought. But hey, I already disagree with it, why should I bother learning more when I can pillory strawmen? Or even just argue out of y own good-faith, if inaccurate, understanding?