[ExI] Tolerance

[Damien Broderick]

On 12/10/2009 10:52 AM, Post Futurist wrote:

> *Don't you think you might have one foot planted in religious tradition,
> and one foot in atheism or agnosticism?*

One huge problem with this rather disjointed thread is the confusion 
between "religion" and "belief in a god or gods". An atheist, just from 
the derivation of the word, is a person who has no belief in deity. But 
of course there are many godless religions. Animist religions seem to 
have no gods, per se, but see the world as suffused with and shaped by 
personified forces and passions. The Australian aboriginal Dreaming is a 
vast ancient integral cosmology in which the seasonal landscape and its 
inhabitants are representations of volitional Ancestors; there's nothing 
remotely like an Abrahamic God--but it would seem absurd not to call 
this all-encompassing worldview "religious." In our dominant cultures 
the religious impulse happens to be hopelessly confounded with notions 
of a rewarding and punishing god, but it can probably be disentangled in 
such a way that an honest atheist can participate without compromise in 
religious celebrations, holidays, etc, or come up with some of our own. 
Not easily, though, if the conventionally religious insist that their 
theistic activities of worship and petition are mandatory.

Damien Broderick