Sometimes I scan the spams in my blog’s working pages just to see if one might be legitimate. There was one that caught my eye this morning about atheism. If it had been a comment connected to the piece I wrote on atheism, I might have released it, but it was a response to a blog that had nothing to do with atheism. Because his (male name) comments were interesting, I thought I would respond.
The writer reminded me that not all religions believe in God and gave Buddhism as an example. This is accurate as far as my understanding of Buddhism goes. Buddhism would better be defined as a way of life or a life attitude, but there are specific practices involved and, for some, elaborate rituals. Yet they don’t really have a doctrine of God. Because if this, it is conceivable that one could believe in God as described and still be a practicing Buddhist. He also mentioned that, in earlier times, persons who did not believe in the gods of the Greeks or Romans were considered atheists. I remembered this from my studies.
The spammer suggested that atheists are sometimes religious. I am not sure what he was referring to, but this brought to my mind a discussion I listened to one day on PBS about atheism. The person being interviewed said that many atheists today are forming communities that look a lot like those found among religious folks. Atheists, he said, are realizing a hunger for fellowship with like-minded people and ritualistic expression that religious people enjoy.
Unfortunately, spammers don’t actually read blogs. They just write generic comments and launch them into the blogosphere. So this blogger won’t know that I wrote a response, but I hope you find it of some interest.