[geeks] Religion and the Presidency

[der Mouse]

> As a nontheist[0], one of my biggest problems with even the most
> innocuous, subtle religions, is that (it appears to me that)
> adherents have chosen a wholly unlikely answer instead of having the
> self-confidence to say, "I don't know".

As a theist, I find it incredibly arrogant for others to try to tell
me, effectively, that it's all my imagination (which is one of the
things that saying I "chose" an "unlikely answer" amounts to).  My
religion, for example, is firmly grounded in personal experience, and
how (un)likely anyone - even me - finds the experiences, or the
conclusions they have driven me to, is _utterly_ irrelevant.  (If you
bang your shin on a chair, it doesn't matter how unlikely the chair or
its collisiion with your shin may be; it still hurts. :)

> [0] I chose nontheist over atheist as a label because while I cannot
> definitively say that there isn't an entity with root access to the
> universe, I think it's quite a bit less likely than most of the other
> alternatives.

Not all theists include omniscience or omnipotence (which is what I
take your "root access to the universe" to mean) as attributes of their
deities.  Certainly the deities that manifest in _my_ life have
neither, and, while my mental model of them is necessarily rather
imprecise, I'm not entirely convinced either attribute even really
makes sense (I'm not sure they have anything close enough to a
consciousness).

> Each step past theism into religion seems even less likely,

What is religion to you, then?  I use the word to mean one's
relationship with whatever deity or deities manifest in one's life.
(One to whom there are no deities does not, by this definition, have a
religion, and I see nothing wrong with that.)

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