Following on from the post yesterday about the differences between religious and secular faith, Greta Christina has another excellent post that addresses this issue. I’m not quite in agreement with the mainstream atheist crowd on much of the dogma of not believing (frankly, because I don’t think there should be a dogma – it’s more about being able to separate reality from myth, but I digress.)
The thing I appreciate about Greta’s take on this issue is: whatever conclusion you draw about religious faith, people aren’t consistent in their day-to-day lives and everyone, I mean everyone, has at least one area of irrational belief. So, to borrow a phrase from the Bronze Age myth book “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”
I used to be more on the atheist dogma side but have moved to a more pragmatic central standpoint. If religion helps you be a good (very debatable term),caring, tolerant, hardworking citizen of the world then thats great and I have no problems with that. If you’re that and atheist thats great too.
I’ve met kind intelligent Christians and stupid nasty atheists and vice versa so don’t really care about the Christian/Muslim/Atheist/Agnostic/Pagan labels as much as what life the person is leading.