Thread

atheism is just a deviant protestant sect

Ego

Actions born of love (agape) = good. Actions born of fear = evil Not really that different than what flows through much of a theistic approach, just without the personified deity. Buddhism and taoism are both atheistic religions with well formed ethos. If you ask me the notion of God's existence or non existence is one of the oldest semantic arguments around though. I'd rather see more people understand or at least experience the divine union of things no matter the words they use to describe it. Beats rote repetition of dogma on the level of superstition any day. But, seeing past the cultural stylization would be even better.

I find most atheists just misplace God as a necessarily personified hierarchical existence, without considering that God in a wholistic, emergent and pervasive experience is no less worthy of witnessing and declaring. Outside of that it’s just willful ignorance I fear.

This, and I’d argue for Buddhism and Taoism being deist, at least originally

I could see the case for that. I usually mean atheism in the soft sense anyhow. That is, not saying there is a god, as opposed to asserting there is no god (which takes more faith than I can imagine mustering). The notion of divinity in them seems almost beside the point -- it may as well be any other natural phenomenon, like gravity or entropy. That is, gods may cause things, but they're not necessarily normative or commanding.