Hi Unbeliever,

You make several interesting points I should like to respond to, if I may.

Like you, I have never encountered anyone who called atheism a religion, though I've heard of several folk who consider religion atheistic (Christian missionaries vis a vis Buddhism, for example, or pagan Romans and others re Judaism and /or (early) Christianity.) The latest example seems to be those people (perhaps yourself included) who seem to imagine that Mother Teresa was an atheist, and at the end of His life, Jesus also. I have to admit the idea that God might be an atheist is an intriguing one, worthy of Santayana say ("There is no God, and Mary was His mother") or Borges, or Reb Menahem Mendl of Kotz.

Although I agree that agnosticism [in the modern sense] is "not an unreasonable stand," I'm less convinced than you (seem to be) that this is a viable position regarding the existence of a god. In other words, I concede it is "honest" as you put it; but I'm not persuaded it is truthful. It's not only sitting on the fence, it's sitting on a non-existent one. Keeping your balance is all very well, in lots of situations, even laudable in some, and worthy of applause in a few (the circus top, for example). Aside from its entertainment value, however, it tends to be petty or bourgeois (and usually both). Whoever heard of genuine lovers prizing anything as prissy as proof (or disproof)? Tallying up the pros and cons and forming an opinion on that basis.?

Atheism may (or may not) be "a more strenuous intellectual perspective" if that is a recommendation but I'm none too sure what "really virile in the intellectual sense" really (?)signifies (possibly because I am not that!). Virility, in my book, has to do with manliness in some sense, and could be construed as a virtue, but it sounds odd to call it an intellectual one, as if feminism hadn't happened. Are you attempting to imply that theism is okay for old women but not for young buckeroos? I trust you aren't, but worry a little.

Personally, I can think of several surer paths to atheism "than reading the entire Old Testament". Reading parts of it, for example, instead of (or as well as) "the whole shebang". Not reading it at all, with any real understanding (or "charity" as Augustine puts it). "Reading" it as one might struggle with an alien language; accurately enough, perhaps, with a little learning, but 'woodenly' (for want of a worse word).

One path to atheism, surer than most, would seem to be the super-highway; not just the Internet as such, the so-called world-wide-web, but the Information Technology that comes with it, as part of the deal. Given time, this produces experts on any subject under the sun; virtually infallible evidence that there CANNOT be a god. At least not one given to smiting His enemies, left, right, and centre.

I daresay "some sort of spiritual gorilla with super-powers" - let alone a "Supreme Being" - would have to be beyond our understanding (given the true state of the latter). I'd just observe that your incisive comment "God, to be God, would have to be far beyond the scope of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic perception" is itself a quintessential Judaeo-Christian-Islamic perception (ironically enough!) The only difference is that the transcendence of Adonai-Jesus-Allah works both ways, outwards into Infinity, yet inwards there as well. Far beyond our best telescope but far beyond our mst powerful microscope also.

Thank you for reading these comments, and apologies for their shortcomings.

Mazel tov.

R.