I don’t believe in any God or Gods. That makes me an atheist. I am very specifically and deliberately not a Christian of any stripe. With that said, I have great respect for several specific Christians. I don’t think that any particular religious affiliation is either necessary nor is it sufficient to lead a respectable, useful, intelligent, and honorable life. I am really very tired of the attack atheist crowd and their absolutism.<\/p>\n
To quote Ani Difranco: I have found great truth, utility, comfort, and strength in Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism as conveyed by the 14th Dala Lama. Buddhism is an atheist religion (“no god, no soul”), and when in doubt I’ve followed the Dalai Lama’s advice to “look and evaluate for myself.” I am not an evangelist for this particular belief system. I’m happy to explain my understanding, and I intend to try to do just that in the coming years. If it helps you, great. If not, keep looking. Life is more complex than little ‘ole me.<\/p>\n I’ve contributed to an atheist radio show a few times. I’ve protested against the Christian Scientists. I helped to start a secular scholarship advancing separation of church and state. I’ve engaged religious protesters at other events and tried to figure out why they got up early in the morning to come and yell at the likes of me. I’ve also travelled to Haiti both before and after the earthquake with a ‘faith based’ service organization. I’ve dealt with the death of relatives, and I think that I’ve offered comfort to others as they went through the same. I feel a strong obligation to truth, to honesty, and to my fellow beings. I think that sentience is not limited to humankind – and I think that the way we treat our food animals is a terrible crime both against them and against our better natures. We cannot hope to cause untold suffering and live without consequences. <\/p>\n I also think that modern atheism, as a belief system, has a long way to go before it can claim any sort of moral equity with all but the very worst of the theists.<\/p>\n My beliefs, briefly stated, parallel the first three of the four noble truths of Buddhism:<\/p>\n * Suffering is pervasive. If you look around, you will find this to be true. I’m not sure about the fourth. I’m still working on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don’t believe in any God or Gods. That makes me an atheist. I am very specifically and deliberately not a Christian of any stripe. With that said, I have great respect for several specific Christians. I don’t think that any particular religious affiliation is either necessary nor is it sufficient to lead a respectable, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-87","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/87\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}I don't think that I'm better than you, but I don't think that I'm worse<\/code>.<\/p>\n
\n* The causes of most suffering can be traced to ignorance and incompetence.
\n* Most suffering can be alleviated, over time, through learning and re-habituation<\/p>\n