On a certain variety of atheism (edited)

I am not a believer of any organized religion, nor am I one of those generically "spiritual" types. I have a few vaguely hippy-dippy pseudo-pagan-animistic impulses (particularly attributing spirits to, and seeking to placate, inanimate objects like my car and my computer), and an unexamined faith in the precept that what one does to others ultimately rebounds upon oneself, though the latter is more a philosophy than any belief in the divine. And unsurprisingly, as a politically liberal, highly-educated (note: educated, not smart!) modern woman, I have a lot of problems with the doctrines of certain denominations and the behavior of many in the name of religion.

Yet I cannot embrace atheism, and ultimately, it's because atheism as a rejection, even hatred, of religion comes into conflict with my principles/beliefs as a historian.

Before grad school, I was pretty anti-religion, and considered almost any expression of religion as an imposition on my right to be religion-free. I'm not sure why I was so hostile, except that I had very little exposure to it. My parents both grew up devout (Anglican on the one side and Roman Catholic on the other), but it was a devotion rooted in time and place, and by the time I came along both my mother and father had left behind the communities and class in which their faith had been fostered. My mother made an effort to teach my sister and me about Jesus' life, but without the parish framework with which she'd grown up, or something to replace it, in her own words, "It just sounded...silly." She told my father she had no objection to our being raised Catholic, but he would have to be responsible for it - the man who never again took communion after his divorce from his first wife. Besides, in my parents' marriage, the immediate, day-to-day tasks of raising the children fell to my mom. So it was nothing, pretty much.

We also heard a LOT about the Holocaust in my elementary/junior high school days, which I think taught me a disdain for religion as much as anything else. Not because the Nazis were portrayed as Christians or representing Christianity - which is good, because I don't think that would be very accurate - but because it was the fact that they cared so much about someone else's religious beliefs that started the whole mess in the first place. (It was okay to be religious - the Jews were cool - but not okay to care about other people's religion.)

What changed in grad school? First, I met some deeply religious people, which opened my eyes to the role that religion could play in someone's life. I remember confessing to a devoutly Lutheran friend of mine that religion just looked like a whole bunch of rules about what you couldn't do, and she just laughed - wasn't shocked, wasn't upset, just thought that was one of the funniest things she'd ever heard.

But more importantly, I began to study the Middle Ages in depth, and ran right up against the fact that whether you think religion is good or bad or neither, it was central to medieval people's lives. And I don't mean that in the simplistic, "they had to think the way the Church wanted them to" caricature that many people hold in their heads in the section labeled "Middle Ages." Rather, Christianity provided a framework for medieval people's understanding of the world around them, a lens through which they saw the universe. This shaped how medieval people thought - in the same way that the modern understanding of gravity shapes how we think today - without telling them what to think. While I've never succumbed to what I've heard people call the professional hazard of medievalism - converting to Catholicism - studying the Middle Ages made me view religion in a more balanced manner.

Because the thing is, if you believe that people of religious belief are, essentially, stupid and irrational, then you have to believe that medieval people were stupid and irrational. But spend even a small amount of time studying medieval people - seriously studying them - and you soon realize this is completely untrue, and in fact, I consider it part of a historian's creed that if you think the people you study were stupid and irrational, you're not a very good historian. That does not mean historians should be cheerleaders for their subjects, or accept or approve of all that they do (hello, I teach about the Crusades!). Nor am I saying that it's invalid to dislike or consider stupid specific historical individuals (my sense is that some biographers come to loathe their subjects by the time they finish their projects; myself, I wouldn't want to spend a lot of quality time with Abelard). But to dismiss an entire culture or society because you don't agree with some of their beliefs is simply not being a good historian.

That's all very well and good, a modern atheist might say, but medieval people didn't know any better. Today we do. I don't blame medieval people for being stupid enough to believe in religion, but I do blame modern people. 

But this violates another part of my historian credo - one that is perhaps more important to medievalists and other pre-modernists, but which I would hold to be necessary for all historians. And that is that progress is bunk. People are people are people, wherever and whenever you go. People in the twenty-first century are not smarter or more advanced or more evolved than people in the fourteenth century, just by virtue of the century in which they live. We, like medieval people, interpret the world around us in light of cultural frameworks that shape our beliefs just as strongly as the medieval church shaped the beliefs of medieval people. They just happen to be different frameworks.

This is not to say that those differences aren't important, or that I don't prefer living in the modern world to living in the Middle Ages (from what I can determine about the latter). But for me, the issue of living today vs. then is one of standards of living - we have better hygiene, greater comfort, better medical care (I'd still have a gall bladder if I lived in the fourteenth century). We live lives of what medieval people would view as unimaginable luxury. I'd like some evidence, though, that our modern cultural frameworks have actually reduced human suffering and conflict compared to medieval cultural frameworks.

So, throw out progress, and what you get is not the idea that modern people should be more rational and intelligent than medieval people, but the recognition that humans are humans are humans, and that religion is simply part of human society. All human societies. I don't know of any society that genuinely lacks some form of religious belief (and don't give me the Soviet Union; sending religion underground isn't the same as actually abolishing it). Religion may be "irrational," but that's because humans are irrational. I don't think we can change that, and in many instances, I don't think we need to. I have no problem with objections to specific, oppressive religious practices - no one has the right to hurt other people in the name of their religion. But I see no point in railing about the existence of religion itself. The very existence of irrationality isn't a threat to humankind - it's a condition. Let's study its expressions, let's understand what it provides people.

ETA: From some comments about the meaning of atheism, I need to clarify something: Dr. Virago's comment is correct, and this post is inspired by recent conversations at Pharyngula, especially those about PZ's request for consecrated wafers. I like and generally respect PZ, and, to be frank, didn't want to attract the response of some of his diehard commenters (many of whom I also like and respect, just differ with on this one issue), so I chickened out and spoke in overly general terms without linking. But the atheism I'm referring to here is atheism that is actively hostile to religion, that considers it the height of ignorance and irrationality, and considers the eradication of religion as a noble goal. My apologies to those of you who consider yourself atheists but don't fall into this category - I should have been more clear. (I also probably have more to say about progress but that can go in the comments.)

Comments

[Anastasia]

I loathe abelard. seriously, I loathe him. I also deeply dislike John Wesley.

this, of course, has nothing to do with the substance of your post, which I really, really like.

[amy]

This brings up so much for me. I think I'm pretty much in line with you on my personal religious beliefs... but I do struggle with modern people who whole-heartedly believe in all a religion has to offer. I guess my problem is that so many moderns do it "by the Book" and so much of intellectual and scientific thought has taken us beyond this. Surely we have more on our plate now than the Medievals. I'm with you on the intellectual *capabilities* of Medievals versus Moderns... but I do believe we can conceive of so many more *possibilities* because so much more has been put out there in the intervening years.

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself well as I'm typing this and trying to keep Teddy from stabbing himself with a letter opener... no wonder so many babies fell in hearth fires! Toddlers are the Force's scourge.

[Dr. Virago]

Hm, New Kid, I wonder what vocal atheist inspired this post? ;)

I love the grow Abelard-hating society here, btw. I remember a whole grad seminar who absolutely loathed him and put our prof in the awkward position of defending him. It was all rather...well...*irrational*. Te-hee!

[What Now?]

NK, such an interesting post!

I actually do believe in progress, not in a simplistic sort of "things just keep getting better and better" sort of way but in recognition that, as Amy said above, there has been accumulation of knowledge and experiences over the centuries. But then again, I study much more recent eras, so perhaps that has shaped my thinking as medievalist study has shaped yours. Interesting.

[K]

This post brought me out of lurkdom, but I've been reading for years.

I use atheism to describe my personal lack of belief in gods or gods, without a hatred of religion or those who practice it. I don't even think religion is irrational, though after ears of economics courses, my definition of rational is probably different than that used in normal language.

[Janice]

Atheism does not mean believing that belief is stupid and irrational. Atheism can simply be the inability to accept or hold a belief in a higher power for whatever reason.

My historical study of the creation and editing of the Bible (Old and New Testaments) left me unable to accept textual fundamentalism. I see the close parallels between all sorts of ancient beliefs and I suspect there's more "human need" behind doctrines and belief systems than divine truths.

I suspect this also made me far too curmudgeonly to accept any sort of institutional authority over my spirituality so the primates of Rome or Canterbury just don't cut it, nor do the rules of the presbyters and Puritans.

I love to study the richness of premodern religious beliefs and am the closest thing that my university has to a historian of religion, I just don't find comfort in these beliefs.

[trillwing]

I think you're being a bit uncharitable to atheists by lumping us all together. Yes, there are vocal atheists who are a**holes, just as there are vocal believers who fall into the same category.

As an atheist, I can appreciate religion and even find it fascinating--I certainly don't hate religion or religious people. My experience is that familiarizing oneself with the tenets of a religion is a very good way to understand the cultures that have adopted it. Being an atheist does not preclude curiosity about religion or necessarily include a criticism of it. Nor do I think being an atheist means entirely closing the door on future religious involvement or belief.

For example, I LOVE the Friends General Conference Quakers, their way of worship, their fellowship, their charitable nature, their ways of seeing the world. And even though I'm an atheist, I have gone to many meetings. But right now, atheism is the space I inhabit: I don't believe in God, but I'm not about to criticize or look down on someone who does believe in god(s). I have friends of many faiths, and some of us talk regularly about religion.

I have little patience, however, for people of any faith who preach intolerance or hatred. And I see that too often these days.

I also have little patience for people of any faith who lack curiosity about other faiths or who believe their faith is superior to others.

I can't comment on the medieval scene, as I'm woefully undereducated in that era. But I agree with you--understanding the faith culture of a people helps you better appreciate their lives and works.

[Brian Ogilvie]

I think it's helpful to distinguish between an ideology of Progress and the notion that, with regard to clearly defined problems, small-p progress is possible. Of course there's a tendency to conflate the two, which goes back at least to the late sixteenth century (e.g. Francis Bacon's dictum, antiquitas saeculi, juventus mundi). But it's possible to say that we can communicate and move around much more effectively than our ancestors without necessarily drawing the conclusion that we are better than them in some absolute sense, and that the Internet and the jet plane are Good Things. (After all, premodern modes of transportation didn't dramatically increase atmospheric CO2.)

With respect to atheism in particular, it's important to note the changes in what Charles Taylor, following Heidegger, calls the "background understanding" to religious belief. Taylor's latest book, A Secular Age, is a philosophical history focusing on how atheism came to be a respectable position to hold in the modern West--even if it is not necessarily the majority position. One of the book's big points is that belief means something very different today, when it has to be defended against a philosophically and experientially respectable unbelief, than it did when unbelievers were generally dismissed as liars or madmen. (Michael Buckley has noted that only in the late 18th-century can you find Europeans who are willing to proclaim themselves atheists.) It's a deep book and worth the time it takes to read and digest.

And I don't see a necessary contradiction between being an atheist in 2008 and having the historical (or sociological) imagination to understand religion, as long as one understands that one's atheism is itself conditioned by the intellectual and cultural resources to hand in your own time and place. That's very different from the claim that people in the past were stupid. More often than not, they were quite limited in the range of alternative worldviews available to them in comparison with modern educated westerners. Whether you think that exposure to alternative viewpoints is a Good Thing or not, though, depends on your ethical stance (see, for instance, Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism). Again, though, I don't see any contradiction between being a cosmopolitan in 2008, and understanding the opposing mindset when doing historical, sociological, or anthropological analysis.

[Winawer]

Yet I cannot embrace atheism, and ultimately, it's because atheism as a rejection, even hatred, of religion comes into conflict with my principles/beliefs as a historian.

(As I was writing this comment, I see that a few other people beat me to the punch. That'll teach me to go out to the store for milk! :-)

Interesting post, but I'm disappointed in the caricature of atheism that you argue against. Rejection of religion is the not the same as hatred of it, nor does it mean that atheists think that religious people are stupid. Perhaps some do, but just as not all Catholics have to answer for the sexual abuse scandals dogging Catholic priests, not all atheists mock the religious or view them as morons too stupid to grasp the obvious.

As a scientist, I run up against religious people all the time, some of whom support the work I do on evolution, and some of whom tell me that I'm a dangerous murderer who is going to Hell. But I try not to treat all religious people as lunatics because of the actions of a few.

[Dr. Rural]

Well, I kind of like Abelard, but I'm not a *real* medievalist. A worse admission: I like Augustine. A lot. My sense of Augustine, I think, gets at some of the stuff you were talking about in your original post. I think he is wrong on all kinds of things (um, women?), but I simply cannot deny that he was a brilliant thinker -- much smarter than me; probably smarter than anyone I know.

About the hostility toward religion you discussed . . . I'm a practicing Catholic. A few years ago, a very dear friend of mine (an atheist) said "It seems to me like religion is really about knowing that other people are going to hell."

I laughed, but I also knew exactly where he was coming from -- his experience of religion has been of Christians talking about how much God hates whole groups of people. Jesus himself hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors back in the day, but now he only likes the respectable and law-abiding?

To paraphrase Jesus: the first commandment is to love God; the second is to love your neighbor. If we Christians don't act like this -- if we spread anger and shame and guilt -- we have no one to blame but ourselves for the reaction we get. Our hatred and judgment of other people draws down fear and contempt in return? Imagine that.

[Scrivener]

I consider myself an atheist, or at least I did until recently and I still think that I am an atheist but maybe moving more toward agnosticism. And up until maybe 4 years ago, I had a certain amount of antipathy toward organized religion, but mostly in the sense that I had absolutely no interest in partaking of it myself and thought that it often worked against what I believe is the public good--I don't think I ever thought of religious people as by definition stupid. But even 3 years ago, I chose not to take part in a support group that I was interested in because it met in a church building and I just didn't want to set foot in a church.

All of that said, today I am a member of a Unitarian Universalist church, I sing in the choir, I'm on the steering committee for the group working to make the church as green as possible, and starting today I'm on the small group of people planning the religious education curriculum. Like I said, I still pretty much consider myself an atheist but here I am anyway.

I don't mean this comment as criticism of your post, since in your update you clarified your position. But today I left that meeting on religious education and was thinking about how odd it was that I was there, and then I read this post and it kind of coalesced my thinking about how much, well, progress I've made in my own life in the last half-dozen years or so.

[Anastasia]

Can I also just say that I love Augustine with a love that is pure and true and lasting. I couldn't care less that he likely wouldn't much care for me if we ever met. I adore him without reservation.

[Dance]

Like your point re progress!

I'm agnostic, but definitely one of my weak points as a historian is that I don't like thinking about religion. I don't like studying it, it doesn't leap to my mind as a major contextual factor (though it is), and I tend to just forget about it.

I remember teaching Hinduism or Judaism or something (20 minute tour--gotta love world history!) and my reading of the sacred document was *all* about "what kind of society does this reflect?" About half way through the discussion, I remembered "oh yeah, this is a sacred text. Guess we should talk about the theology behind it."

[The History Enthusiast]

Very interesting post NK! I am a devout evangelical, so we certainly have different beliefs, but I really like to have conversations about atheism and religion (although so often they degenerate into name calling, which drives me nuts). Your post wasn't like most conversations I've had on this topic; it was very thoughtful and thought-provoking. I am fascinated by atheism--mostly because I can't really fathom it--and so I appreciated your candor.

In a completely unrelated topic, are you on Facebook? I've been reading you for a while and I wondered if you might want to be friends. No pressure, but if you want to just email me. My email is on my blog.

[another anon]

I'm interested in why our assumptions are (often) that atheists are the ones who are out to eradicate or destroy religion, just because a (very few) number of them make public anti-religion (usually anti very public displays of religion) statements or actions. In contrast, MOST Americans say they would never vote for an atheist (while Atheists vote for people who declare that they believe in god all the time.) Its not that I think that the people you describe don't exist, I'm just not sure why they got branded with the face of typical atheism while religious people aren't presumed to all be like fundamentalists (as indeed they are not.)

[Belle]

See, NK? You may be leaving the academy, but there are those of us that just love to see what you're thinking!

Me, I'm more of an animist than any other kind of believer. And that is far from rational but very satisfying for me. Studying history and the practices of organized religion did more to turn me off various expressions of religion/spirituality than anything else. My students are generally horrified when we cover the Crusades or other expressions of military-religious conflict. We're talking evidence and interpretation, I tell them, not faith. Faith is personal and can be profound, but as a historian I cannot ignore the evidence simply to serve it. This astounds them, but they seem less threatened by it.

So I really like your "The very existence of irrationality isn't a threat to humankind - it's a condition. Let's study its expressions, let's understand what it provides people."

[Bardiac]

I tend to have a live and let live attitude towards most religions. But I can't afford that attitude when laws and practices based on religious beliefs adversely affect me or other folks. Those include laws that include teaching religious belief in science classes, reduce my ability to make decisions about my life, and so forth. My militancy is a defensive response.

But it's separate from trying to understand early modern culture (or medieval culture).

[meteechart]

I'd like to suggest that atheism is becoming a "thing" rather than non-thing (non-theism). And, it is doing so in a sort of binary compliment, two sides of a coin, to the growing vocalization and influence of aggressively evangelist forms of theistic beliefs. For some, atheism has become a system rather than a non-system. And, for some it is a system that includes evangelism and even exclusionary confidence in certain meta narratives.

Some of us, religious, spiritual, an non- are responding the the newer manifestation of atheism in the same way we respond to other systematized intolerances. However, I think that others here share my sentiment that as atheists, we chose to be in a non-system, and are reluctant to see a descriptor we've applied to ourselves turn into what we see as more or less pejorative. Perhaps we need another word.

[Christine]

I really enjoyed this honest post and see myself as agnostic at this point in my life. I was raised Roman Catholic and attended 12 years of Catholic school. I pretty much had my fill of any religion and have no desire to seek out any alternatives to the Catholic faith. When most of my h.s. alumns were going to Catholic or Jesuit universities I chose a very diverse, liberal and dominantly Jewish college. It was a breath of fresh air to interact with people of diverse faiths and there was a nice respect for all present on that campus. Of course, it has been a struggle to repell the pressures from catholic family members to suspend my faith practice. Truthfully, I do acknowledge the rules aspect of religion, particularly for women. The government is about all that I can handle; religion on top of that would be too much.

On a side note, I married someone from the former Soviet Union who was banned from practicing religion. Now in the states, my in-laws just practice the baptism (more superstitious feeling than a real obligation).

[mimi]

Progress is bunk. Ha! Henry Ford is rolling in his grave, surely.

I've been giving this whole issue a pretty serious think really, and I think you've hit it right on the head with the progress-is-bunk idea. I'm not awake enough to explain this but what cheeses me off about some religions is their teleological thrust, the constant drive to improve or change our flawed human nature. The cause of so much misery and suffering in the world.

[af]

A very interesting post and comments. I totally agree with your view of at least some atheists; as a (non-religious) professor of religious studies, I am constantly having to explain to my agnostic and atheist friends, both inside and outside academia, that there is a lot of diversity within Christianity (usually the religion people are atheist *about* or because of). Just within the past week one of my colleagues said, "Well, Christians think everything about the body is bad," and on another occasion someone said something about how Christians only care about sin. It seems like atheists believe the version of Christianity they heard about from the Christian they like least.

But I do want to take issue with the rejection of progress, especially since you said you'd follow up on that. I certainly don't think we as individuals are morally superior to our ancestors, but the oppression of women, and the acceptance of the principle of slavery and of the inferiority of certain races: these things were worse in earlier ages. I know the medieval period has some nice highlights, but today a 5-year old girl (not just one who's agreed to take a vow of celibacy in a progressive convent!) can walk into a public school in many places and expect to learn how to read, and can later have some control over who she marries or doesn't, and isn't considered someone's property. I'm not blaming religion/s for putting women in the worse position, or for slavery, or non-democratic forms of government, but certainly religions have been used to support these things. In these cases the consensus position has changed for the better. So why wouldn't (or couldn't) it change about religion too?

On a different note, we now understand some things about medicine and meteorology and evolutionary biology that make it impossible to accept certain things religion/s have told us were true (we still call floods "acts of God" and some people still think God punishes people by giving them cancer, but it's hard to make the case when you can reroute a river or cure the illness).

So I would say there are two kinds of progress relevant to the discussion: moral and scientific. Again, I don't mean that we don't have moral blinders on about many, many things. As one beloved professor (a nun) said: The fact that Augustine is so wrong about women should alert us to the fact that even great thinkers make mistakes, and we should be aware of our own vast potential for error.

[Herm]

"the recognition that humans are humans are humans, and that religion is simply part of human society. All human societies. I don't know of any society that genuinely lacks some form of religious belief"

Some authors from the recent study of religion might disagree with that... and say that much more attention has to be paid to what one actually is trying to say if one claims that "religion" (a clearly western term manufactured on the model of Christianity) is a feature of all societies in all times... Of course this topic is discussed under the heading "Invention of Religion".

See for example:

McCutcheon, Russell T. (1997): Manufacturing religion. The discourse on sui generis religion and the politics of nostalgia. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Fitzgerald, Timothy (2000): The ideology of religious studies. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Masuzawa, Tomoko (2005): The Invention of World Religions, or, how european universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Beyer, Peter (2006): Religions in global society. New York: Routledge.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Belated response on my part:

First, I hope the edited bit cleared up how/why I was defining atheism as I did! I apologize again to atheists who didn't fit that description.

@Brian: I think the distinction you make between big-P Progress and little-p progress here is the crucial one for me. As you and Amy (and others) point out, yes, we know a great deal more about communications and transport than people did in the Middle Ages, and in that respect, I'll grant the small-p progress. As you suggest, though, I just don't think that translates to big-P Progress, in the sense that it somehow makes humankind better now than in the past. And I think it's that idea of big-P Progress on which a hatred of religion depends - the idea that humans SHOULD be better now, SHOULD be more rational, more advanced, more evolved.

@Scrivener: What an interesting transformation! I'm glad that it's progress for you. (I hope that doesn't sound condescending... it's just interesting how this - belief, faith - can play out differently on an individual level than on a societal level.)

@Anastasia and Dr. Rural: This is the point in the comments where I play that game invented by lit scholars, where you win by confessing the book you should have read but haven't, and admit that I've really never read much Augustine... just tiny snippets found in source collections on marriage, on just war, and some sort of "representative Augustine" clips from On Christian Doctrine and The City of God. It's very embarrassing, as a medievalist! I mean, even my Americanist husband had read the Confessions! So, I'll have to take your word on him...

@Dance: I taught in a sort of "great books" sequence once, and of course the ancient/pre-modern stuff we read was all religious. They ran a workshop on various texts and I remember a Biblical scholar talking about the gospels and how Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecies of the OT... and I thought, well, that's very nice, but I totally don't understand it! Because it was all theology, not remotely historical. I remember my teaching was observed that semester by a historian in the same program, who said she liked my approach to the texts, but that she knew that was partly because she was a historian, and so approached the texts more like I did than like the religious studies people... which is to say that I do quite a lot of, what kind of society does this reflect? ;-) But as a medievalist I think I did end up having to teach more of the theology sometimes, because (non-Catholic) students would sometimes be outraged by things that were simply part of medieval Christian theology, and I'd have to explain that no, the medieval people weren't making stuff up or just choosing to be evil. (Not that students usually believed me...)

@Bardiac: yes, I definitely understand the defensive response, and that many religious denominations do seek to accomplish things that adversely affect others. I have no problem with people working against specific oppressive expressions of religion, and see that as distinct from getting rid of religion entirely. There are specific churches (*cough*WestboroBaptist*cough*) that I'd be happy to see scourged from the earth.

@af: yes, you're right, beliefs about women and slavery, for instance, were troubling me as I originally wrote this post. I'm still not sure quite how to work that it - though I think I'd perhaps chalk some of those changes up to small-p progress rather than big-P Progress, in the sense that while some of those specific issues have improved, it's not because humankind has become more intelligent/more moral/more advanced. I mean, it's not like there aren't still places in the world where girls don't get educations, or where slavery persists! I think there's a connection between these kinds of "advances" and the hugely improved standard of living we enjoy in industrialized nations - that "moral" advances are a luxury enabled by economic wealth - but I don't have anything specific to back that up.

@Herm: that's very interesting - not something I was aware of before this. I'm sure there are issues about how to define religion, but can you give an example of a society that doesn't have some kind of religious belief? (When I say religion, I'm not necessarily thinking organized church - I'm thinking of shamanism, paganism, animism, ancestor worship, all kinds of things. I used to teach World History, and while that definitely DOESN'T make me an expert on, oh, anything, I remember teaching about various forms of religion pretty much everywhere in the world. Not that the world history texts would necessarily have caught up with those debates in religious studies, though. I guess East Asia in some periods is probably the most contentious example I can think of, in that Confucianism is more of a philosophy than a religion.)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, and I meant to add:
@meteechart: I like your characterization of certain forms of atheism as the flip side of the evangelical coin, and turning into a thing rather than the non-thing that many atheists see it as. I can get behind the non-thing school of atheism, but it's difficult when so many different people claim the label (which as someone else points out, I think, that makes it kind of like Christianity!).

[heresiarch]

where did you get the idea that atheism is a rejection of religion? If anything, it is an expression and embracing of diversity from the "norm" fo society.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

heresiarch, I'm talking about a particular expression of atheism found on the blog linked in my edited section above. For some people, atheism is indeed a rejection and hatred of religion. But by no means for all people, which I hope my edition made clear.

[Academic]

I sincerely appreciate your comments, particularly about people being people. I can appreciate the "professional hazard" of studying Church history.