Atheist inspiration for the season

that makes me think of this quote I read once.

"there are two things you need to know for success in life

1. dont tell everything you know"

so sad....

What the hell is a nichel????

Katha Pollitt may have declared herself an atheist on Crossfire, but she neglected to disclose her grounds for taking this position. In fact, she says, she is not even anti-religion. She is merely "anti-clerical": She doesn't like priests and ministers. Well, neither did Voltaire, but he was not an atheist. Natalie Angier, in her "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist," complained that "nothing seems as despised, illicit and un-American as atheism." But she adduced no reasoning that might bring other Americans into her camp and hence render her less lonely. Gore Vidal has had great fun railing against the Judeo-Christian-Islamic "sky-god," in whose name all sorts of evils have been committed. Then he cites the countervailing wisdom of the deist Thomas Jefferson.

Of all the public-intellectual atheists, the most stalwart and lucid is probably Christopher Hitchens. "I'm an atheist," Hitchens said in a recent interview. "I'm not just neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one." Being anti-religion, however, is not intellectually equivalent to affirming the nonexistence of God. Bertrand Russell, who occupied the same ground as Hitchens, was careful to stress that he was agnostic, not atheist: "An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. … The agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or denial."

And then there are those raised in households where religion was forced upon them and not allowed to explore and make their own decisions = 1. resentment 2. a yearning to explore and learn

...going to stop there....

So condesending.... ;(

so honest

Rob,

The reincarnation part of Buddhism is actually a holdover from Hinduism and other cultural accoutrements. Theravada Buddhism is not all about reincarnation; you don't have to believe in reincarnation to follow a Buddhist path. Buddhism is a way of perceiving life, not a way of perceiving the afterlife. Buddha did not speak of an afterlife.

Mahayana Buddhism is a mystical version of Buddhism and reincarnation is a big part of it (I don't know how, I don't study Mahayanan or Tibetan Buddhism).

Buddhism, Plain & Simple - great reference book.

Try to be brave. You'll be fine.

Whew.  Good deal. Hey, say that one about how He believes in you even if you don't believe in Him.  I love that one.