My “rules” for this post are simple: respect is mandatory; curiosity is fine, asking for clarification is fine; proselytizing, denigration and snark have no place here.
This post originally started as a reply to someone else on another forum earlier this week, before I realized it wasn’t *really* what the original poster was asking for. However, because it’s rare enough that I manage to be even this coherent about how I conceptualize faith, I didn’t want to just delete it. I originally posted it in a more protected space, but decided to clean it up (and expand on it in places) because I think part of what the person to whom I was originally replying is interested in involves the idea that people who think about what they believe (or don’t believe) tend to be private or introspective and therefore silent about it so we have a hard time finding each other. The ability to respect someone else’s belief (or non-belief) and engage in honest curiosity about our world, and about how we all navigate it, is, I hope, not as rare as all that so much as it’s something we’ve been taught by the various dominant organized religions is unacceptable. I don’t believe it is unacceptable, so decided to do my part to contribute to some real or imagined larger conversation.
This got pretty long, so to spare the feed readers of those of you not interested, more after the jump. Continue reading
