Thursday, September 1, 2011

Neither an Atheist Nor a Theist Until I Can Think of Something More Foolish Sounding To Call Myself

So God is dead, but what can be done with his garments and bones? I am continually asked to identify myself according to the binary poles of "theist" and "atheist" as though these are the only two legitimate dialogues through which divinity may be approached. I am, for all practical purposes, an atheist, but I suspect that most atheists turn a worrisome eye on my decor, for instance. Let us suppose that a third option exists, what might it look like? Option 1 [Theism]: Divinity, understood as God or Gods, is independent of and superior to the human imagination. Option 2 [Atheism]: The genesis of God or Gods in the human imagination is always the consequence of either fraud or folly. Option 3: As artifacts of the human imagination, these characters take on their most interesting and relevant forms when treated as just that. I will leave this short post with a question: How many of us, on close examination, actually fall into one of the first two categories? Not that there's anything wrong with that....;-)

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