Reply to a Christian, by Sam Harris
From: Council for Secular Humanism (http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_4)
... Of course, your reasons for believing in God may be more personal than those I have discussed above. I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you regularly feel rapture or bliss while in prayer. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out, however, that billions of other human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences-but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the sheer beauty of nature. There is no question that it is possible for us to have profoundly transformative experiences. And there is no question that it is possible for us to misinterpret these experiences and to further delude ourselves about the nature of the universe.
sorry, jumping into this rather late. Impish, thank you for posting that article. I really liked reading Harris's reasoning and logic. The section I quoted suddenly made sense of something for me. While practicing Buddhism growing up or trying Christianity while in high school, they never made sense to me. I never had that transformative ecstasy that so many claimed to have. That is until BBM. The film/story/characters did bring me to a point of breaking down my walls and forcing me to look at my life honestly. A few days after seeing the film, I woke up in bed, convulsively crying, realizing exactly what I had been hiding from myself, and why. I came out the other end of that experience with a clearer vision of how my life is suppose to be. I never thought of it as a "transformative experience", but Harris's words suddenly clicked. There was a cleansing, here was ecstasy, and I was transformed. Now I understand why in conjunction with thinking about God, Allah, or Buddha, such an experience can incite such an adamant faith in a religion.
I don't quite agree with Harris on the need to convince others to reject their faith, however. I think that for many faith is something they need to comfort or to give meaning and order to their lives. We need only to convince them that they must accept that others have faith in different things and ideas. It is okay to have personal reason to hold on to faith, no?
and for answering the original post, I don't know if I'd say I'm an Atheist. I'm perfect willing to accept that there is a god, as well as to accept that there is NO god. I certainly believe that their are spiritual realms beyond our own, from personal experience. (see the ghost thread in the poll forum) but the experience was personal, so I don't offer it as proof to anyone that they should believe as I do. I don't believe that any of the religions have the right answer. Buddhism at its heart with its message of moderation as the answer to life's suffering is probably the only one that comes closest to being an answer I can accept. So I think "agnostic" is more appropriate to describe my religious affiliation?
