I'll never forget weeping in front of the TV this day seven years ago

I'll never forget weeping in front of the TV this day seven years ago. I awoke to find a message on my answering machine from my friend Bill. I turned on the TV and just stood there, mouth open, and then the tears came. I was glued to the TV that day. That evening I went to my friends Benjamin and Kimberly's house to pray with them.

Extreme, fanatical, fundamentalist belief in their version of a god led those men to commit those deeds that day. Was John Lennon right? Would it have been different if those men hadn't been religious fanatics? What if there were no countries or possessions? Would they have found another reason to attack? We'll never know. All we can do is live our lives and try to be a positive influence in the world. We need to educate people, but how does one educate religious fanatics? How does one educate people that refuse to listen? How does one speak to a group so extreme that they see human life as worth no more than bricks and mortar used to wall themselves off from the world?

I don't know, but I will never forget that day.

"There's no such thing as a winnable war."

No, I'm not writing about the war in Iraq, rather I am writing about the war between some atheists and some Christians. I don't think this war will end, but I do know that there are atheists, Christians, and other theists who are willing to dialogue without coming to blows. One may wonder what the point of this dialogue would be and sometimes I wonder that myself. I guess my answer would be that the point is to understand ourselves better and the universe we live in.

TinyThinker wrote recently that "...we miss a great deal of what is going on in the world because our reality is tightly bound up in our expectations." I think this is part of what leads to these great battles between worldviews. We are so caught up in, so convinced of, what we hold to be true, that there is no room for us to allow ourselves the possibility of being wrong, even just a little bit.

Calling myself an atheist gained me a lot of baggage that I didn't earn. Many people I've spoken with make all sorts of assumptions about what I believe based simply on my lack of belief in a god. Now, certain phrases I hear from Christians will lead me to make certain assumptions about what they believe, and I'll admit this isn't fair. I knew I couldn't pigeonhole all Christians and yet folks like J.L. Hinman made me realize that even more. I found it quite easy to argue against and dismiss unbending fundamentalist Christians, but once I began to discuss with Christians with more open minds it wasn't quite as easy. Perhaps this was due to my familiarity with fundamentalist Christianity, but I think it more likely that it was due to the fact that the liberal Christians were more flexible and accepting and willing to concede on certain issues, in fact not even seeing them as obstructions to their faith at all.

I think if a god exists he is greater than anything we could imagine, and could transcend all of our actions, and I, honestly, keeping an open mind, can not easily dismiss such a possibility.

I do find it satisfying, but also frustrating at times that many arguments for theism drive me even deeper into my atheism. My pride wants me to dig down and hold onto my atheism, but the rest of me really is seeking truth wherever that may lead. I'm still an atheist with an agnostic leanings, but I do not know where I will end up. Who does?