Well, labels are malleable, but I think there is a spectrum of attitudes, with numerous quirks and twists and kinks in it, ranging from absolute materialism to various degrees of spirituality, various mixes of perception, doctrine, and dogma. In my view there is little distance between dogmatic theists and hard-over dogmatic materialists with no tolerance for spiritual experience. I put them both at the same end of the specturm, the end where the idees fixees and the rigid dogmatism are found.

Saying "there is no infinite spiritual plane to be found behind material existence" is different from saying "there is no unary anthropomorphic male at the top of a rigid hierarchy of cherubim"--yet both views could be called atheistic.


A