Oh, I didn't say that atheism as a philosophy is always that decisive...I just said I'm not. Probably half of my closest friends embrace atheism or agnosticism, so I find myself discussing it quite a bit. I've met different kinds of atheists too, here and there over the years, and some of them are very "decisive"(she said euphemistically) and even a little rude about it, but so are some theists, so that's no reason to think that all atheists are big meanies.
My best friend Karen is an atheist, but she practices Martial arts and with it, Buddhist style meditation and has great transcendent spiritual experiences. Like her, I tend to believe that's a human mechanism, although a very mystical one, but it's part of what I'd term as spirituality. I practice Buddhist style meditation too, although I'm not one, but I like what it does for me. The nice thing about being a Universalist is you can borrow or reject any spiritual idea or experience you like because it's all got some validity. And of course, some of all of it is pure bullshit, like all human convention.
I know where morals and ethics come from, from humans, not gods, so I don't need someone to believe in God to believe they're a decent and compassionate person. I'm convinced that evolution did all the hard work that God gets credit for, and I have a fairly good idea of why some people need to believe in God and organize religions, too. That doesn't have anything to do with the supernatural, just the natural, inherent needs of human beings.
I'm more towards agnosticism if anything but tend to come down on the "it'd be okay if there was a god and hope to hell that he's more like Jesus than Yahweh" side of that whole thing.
But, do I think that God is watching people and fiddling with them and listening to them all day, if there is one? Nah...no evidence of that in my life or anyone else's that I know.
If I were God, I wouldn't be hanging around this little swirling ball of dust on one of the less populated outer arms of the Milky Way all of eternity. Boring.
