The other day, a friend jokingly called me an atheist. I have to say, I took umbrage.
As tolerant as I am, and as much as I believe that everyone is entitled to whatever religious, philosophical, and spiritual ideas he may have, I have never understood atheism. It doesn’t make sense to me.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I want to define atheism. “A” means “without” and “the-” means “god”. Thus, “atheism” means literally “without god”. (I used the lower-case, because atheism does not refer only to “the” god, but any god.)
It follows that “polytheism” means a belief in many gods, such as the ancient Greeks and the modern-day Hindu religion. “Monotheism” pertains to a belief in one god.
And on a related topic, “agnostic” means “without knowledge”. You may have heard of the Gnostic gospels, several versions of the Christ story that were written by the Gnostics, those who were “with knowledge” or “knowledgeable”.
But I digress. Regardless of these definitions, I am certainly not “without god”. I am among the most spiritual people I know! I don’t usually define myself, but please don’t call me an atheist!
Years ago, I had some oddball neighbors who were loudly-proclaimed atheists. They went as far as to create their own religion around atheism, by producing a weekly online radio show about it. I wondered what they talked about! Maybe that was more like anti-theism!
At any rate, I always wanted to say to them: If you love someone, you cannot possibly be an atheist, because love is God and God is love.
Now I have a whole lot more that I could say about GOD, but as long as you know I am the antithesis of an atheist… my work is done for now!
Until next time, y’all be good! Susan K. Morrow (4-19-10)