I love your attitude of wanting a calm, respectful conversation with people who don’t judge or try to change each other.

I don’t label myself anything, whether a political party or religion. But I suppose in some sense, I could be called an atheist. When young, I was taken to a variety of Christian churches and also inundated with the New Age, studied Tantra Yoga intensively, learned from a variety of spiritual practices including Zen. I used to believe in many things that I no longer do.

Do I miss the comfort of my faith? I don’t do anything of any kind based on faith; it doesn’t make sense to me. For me, I feel it would be false comfort, and having that, myself, would feel more disturbing than the chaos. However, I always embrace the ambiguity of contradiction and the awareness that I don’t know the answers to this mysterious world, and I don’t discount how faith pays off for some people. I don’t see religious people as weak; many scientific studies show an increase in longevity, happiness, and so on.

I do believe people are gone when they die. I deal with it because I have to, because believing something I don’t personally find logical would disturb me more. But it’s very, very hard when it comes to my parents. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

I admire Christians in general, and like to listen to what they say. I’ve been forgiven by a Christian woman for something I did wrong, and I felt that demonstrated the power of her faith. I feel Christians should be better represented than they are in many circumstances and they have a lot of value to add to the cultural conversation.

There are indeed many mind-boggling things that occur and that I read about that I can’t explain. Religion doesn’t seem like a logical reason for them, but I try to understand them through other methods, looking into such topics as Egregores. Often, I have no explanation, and I feel that being comfortable with having no answers is a beneficial human trait.

I became an atheist because I love the process of discovering I’m getting closer to what I believe to be an accurate version of an estimate of what constitutes reality, whether that means crossing hero after hero off my list or giving up my belief in reincarnation. I wasn’t hurt by religion, don’t feel anger toward it. It just doesn’t seem logical to me and I haven’t found proof for its claims.