[lbo-talk] Atheism

[Carrol Cox]

I've always described myself as an atheist by birthright, and the
immense amount of Christian and other "spiritual" material to which any
student of renaissance & 18th-c literature is exposed never for a minute
led me to reconsider that birthright. "Spirituality" baffles me -- and
the most likely explanation for its continued grip on so many seems to
me to be that it is at bottom spoiled solidarity. Even as an empty
verbal formula it tends to dry up and blow away within a mass movement,
then flourish again in when mass struggle declines. The Homeric world,
peopled by gods as it is, is quite refreshingly free from either
spirituality or piety.

Carrol