Friend divided betwn Masons & Atheists

__ I am so glad you communicated this to me in detail. You won’t believe how much you & I do have in common. I too was raised Christian in my youth, and I also no longer attend or practice any theistic religion so I would be close to the Atheist side of things as an adult. I say close, because I have also studied Atheism in great detail and have determined that it itself IS a religion. Atheism has its own gods, and prophets, and saints, and holy books, and holy pilgrimage shrines, and its martyrs, and its manifesto=dogma, etc. just like any other religion (I can show you glass enclosed embalmed bodies of its deities, etc). They have made a closed-minded religion out of fighting against religion. Atheists are as closed-minded fighting to prove there is no god as Christians are closed-minded fighting to prove there is a god.

__ May I offer a suggestion? May I offer the thought that you don’t go to the extreme of becoming a closed-minded Atheist-believer spending all your energy trying to prove there is no god? Instead try being an open-minded combination of:

agnostic,

deist,

Epicurean,

humanist,

New-Thought,

Objectivist,

PASTAfarian (Flying-Spaghetti-Monster),

Quantum-mechanic,

Raelian,

transhumanist,

Unitarian-Universalist,

SGI-Value-Creator,

etc.

accepting the slight possibility that there just might be something that most humans do not yet understand, and in their ignorance call it god because they don’t know what better to call it. It’s definitely not a Santa-Claus type old guy sitting on a cloud shooting Earthlings with lightening-bolts, but “it” might still be something as yet undefined.

~Maybe it was ET (Extra-Terrestrials) that visited Earth long ago and Earthlings worshipped them because they had real cool technology.

~Maybe it is a conglomeration of all human knowledge vibrating in atmosphere like radio & TV signals, which some humans tune-into accidentally and others see them as great gurus, avatars, saviors, prophets, son(s)-of-god, etc.

~Maybe it is some Q (Quantum-force) that humans are just beginning to scratch the surface of through theoretical-Quantum-physics (starting with Nobel-Laureate Max Planck & on).

__ If you could stay just short of crossing over to the closed-minded Atheist religion, and can just accept the possibility that there just might exist something beyond what humans have discovered thus far, you’d fit in just fine. Founding-fathers of America like Benjamin Franklin & others (most of whom were Masons) were just that way as well. Most of them considered themselves deists (Belief: maybe a god put some things together & got things started, but she, he, it, they are long gone, and humans are on their own now; today they would be called humanists).

So don’t let that little thing stop you. I am considering transferring my membership into the Clearwater-lodge, and I’d love to have some Hashers there with me. It’ll be FUN!