Hi Missluckie: You are very much accepted. I don’t suspect that your form of atheism (no God) is all that different than my form of Christianity (all things are God). Same thing when you think about it really. Rather than being made by some cosmic watchmaker, we are instead the living manifestation of that which causes the world to be. Our purpose is then simply experience. Everything that we hold to have meaning in life has to do with experience - love, happiness, sorrow, anguish, joy, sight, sound, touch. It’s all about experience. We are the means by which God comes to know itself. When I said atheism was a religion, what I really mean is that it’s a belief system with dogmas. The dogma is reductionist materialism. The idea that consciousness and beings with consciousness arise from conscious-less matter. Conversely, I think the two may actually cause each other, and matter and consciousness would therefore be co-dependent. When I say atheism is a belief system, it’s not an insult. It’s a belief in no God. I believe that everything is God coming to know God through what God makes. All potentials are seen in the Source. The source is then seen in all outcomes, as is demonstrated mathematically in the Mandelbrot Fractal:
youtube.com/watch?v=0jGaio87u3A
It’s not mechanical and it’s not a mystery .It’s simply organic. You don’t have to believe in God to know we are one. Even on a strictly materialist level we are one organism. Even without a belief, you are sacred and an inextricable part of the rest of us, and all living things.