Michael Smith wrote:
>
>
> Still, I rather wonder: if one is really "over" religion -- if one really
> regards it as just folly from start to finish, and has no emotional
> engagement with it -- whence all this heat? Wouldn't one just regard it the
> way one regards people reading their horoscopes?
There is a great advantage, I think, in never having to "escape" from religion but enjoying atheism by birthright more than merit. I have as hard a time imaginatively grasping what it feels like to "lose religion" as I do grasping what it feels like to believe. Both experiences are quite foreign to my own. Most people from Japan, of course, have this luxury of taken-for-granted rather than painfully achieved atheism.
Carrol