Is there any belief system as smugly dogmatic as atheism? The conviction that "if I can't see it, it couldn't possibly exist" is pretty damned arrogant, and everything we've seen in this thread seems to indicate that those who insist on non-belief are among the most intolerant among us.

To me, it's absolutely obvious that Something that surpasses all human understanding could possibly exist, and probably does. Haven't you noticed that Shit Happens ~ shit that you would never have expected? Couldn't it be that there's something going on that our five senses and our piddling little brains just can't perceive?

There all all kinds of believers, and I don't only mean that there are many different religions, each partly right and partly wrong in its attempt to define the Undefinable. It should also be pretty clear that within each of the various faith traditions, there are reasonable and tolerant adherents as well as crackpot hardliners and everything inbetween.

For that matter, agnosticism is usually a pretty reasonable response to the mystery of the human condition, while individual agnostics display different degrees of openness to the beliefs of others.

Secularism, which I wholeheartedly endorse, is not the same thing as non-belief. It's just the reasonable recognition that people's religious beliefs are going to differ, and that the common good requires us to keep our differences to ourselves in the public arena.

Atheism, on the other hand, is something else altogether. In order to maintain the dogmatic belief that an eternal spiritual/metphysical Being COULD NOT POSSIBLY EXIST, it seems to be psychologically necessary for the adherent to steadfastly maintain a petulant and scornful attitude toward all who disagree. Too bad all that energy couldn't be focused in a more positive direction!