where I live, I CAN look up at the night sky and see God. Our clear, black night sky makes me pause and ponder. I see God there.

A lovely image! Here in the light-polluted NW (UK) seems I must do most of my star-gazing in magazines, but we do keep a nice pair of 15x70s in the car for those times we're in the dark places and the clouds clear long enough to catch a glimpse of the majesty of it all.

I don't see God though, but if I stand there long enough I might realise that for most the time it has taken for light to reach us from the Andromeda Galaxy (2.5 million years) humanity & human culture (language, music, architecture, religion, science, spirituality etc. etc.) didn't exist.

On the one hand, I think we've done The Cosmos a grave disservice seeing God in the stars, but, on the other, when one looks long enough to tremble in the face of it all, it's easy to see why we put him there.

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But note that Joe, a Catholic, has a respect for the ancient religious traditions of the various cultures of the world.

Maybe so, but Catholicism hasn't. Its ruthless persecution of ancient religious traditions is one of the things that define it. Indeed, if it wasn't for Catholicism, and (let's face it) Christianity as a whole, we'd have a whole lot more.

But such traditions are of the past; we've transcended them, historically, scientifically, happily and inevitably. Thus the Atheist is an optimist who lives in hope of an ultimate objectivism, where subjective spirituality might be celebrated in human terms, rather than those founded on religious dogma & supernaturalism.

The great Atheist hope is that humanity might one day collectively tremble afresh beneath the stars in a different awe entirely to the desperation in which we created God and, in our arrogance and ignorance, saw ourselves as the centre of it all.   

As Carl Sagan said : The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff, we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.