A few recent events, including the launch of Nautilus and this interesting thread on Brian Leiter’s blog, have brought the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) back into the spotlight. As probably everybody knows, the JTF is a philanthropic organization that supports research into the “Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality,” encourages “dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians,” and seeks to use science to acquire “new spiritual information.” They like to fund lots of things I find interesting — cosmology, physics, philosophy — but unfortunately they also like to promote the idea that science and religion are gradually reconciling. (As well as some projects that just seem silly.) They also have a huge amount of money, and they readily give it away.
I don’t think that science and religion are reconciling or can be reconciled in any meaningful sense, and I believe that it does a great disservice to the world to suggest otherwise. Therefore, way back in the day, I declined an opportunity to speak at a Templeton-sponsored conference. Ever since then, people have given me grief whenever my anti-Templeton fervor seems insufficiently fervent, even though my position — remarkably! — has been pretty consistent over the years. Honestly I find talking about things like this pretty tiresome; politics is important, but substance is infinitely more interesting. And this topic in particular has become even more tiresome as people on various sides have become increasingly emotional and less reflective. But I thought it would be useful to put my thoughts in one place, so I can just link here the next time the subject arises.
In brief: I don’t take money directly from the Templeton Foundation. You will never see me thanking them for support in the acknowledgments of one of my papers. But there are plenty of good organizations and causes who feel differently, and take the money without qualms, from the World Science Festival to the Foundational Questions Institute. As long as I think that those organizations are worthwhile in their own right, I am willing to work with them — attending their conferences, submitting articles, whatever. But I will try my best to convince them they should get money from somewhere else.
I’ve had various opportunities to get money from Templeton, and I certainly don’t come running to blog about it every time the possibility arises. Once I even got a call from a corporate head-hunter who wanted to inquire about my interest in a job with JTF. (Someone had clearly not done their homework.) But it’s not, as many people argue, because I am worried that Templeton works in nefarious ways to influence the people it funds. That is pretty unclear; there are some dark murmurings to that effect, with this piece by John Horgan being perhaps the most explicit example, but little hard evidence. It wouldn’t be utterly shocking to find that a funding agency tried to nudge work that it supported in directions that it was favorable to; that’s the kind of thing that funding agencies do. But there are plenty of examples of people receiving money from JTF and swearing that they never felt any pressure to be religion-friendly. More importantly, I don’t see much evidence that the JTF is actively evil, in (say) the way the Discovery Institute is evil, deliberately lying in order to advance an anti-science agenda. The JTF is quite pro-science, in its own way; it’s just that I think their views on science are very wrong.
And that’s the real reason why I don’t want to be involved directly with Templeton. It’s not a matter of ethical compromise; it’s simply a matter of sending the wrong message. Any time respectable scientists take money from Templeton, they lend their respectability — even if only implicitly — to the idea that science and religion are just different paths to the same ultimate truth. That’s not something I want to do. If other people feel differently, that’s for them and their consciences, not something that is going to cause me to shun them.
But I will try to explain to them why it’s important. Think of it this way. The kinds of questions I think about — origin of the universe, fundamental laws of physics, that kind of thing — for the most part have no direct impact on how ordinary people live their lives. No jet packs are forthcoming, as the saying goes. But there is one exception to this, so obvious that it goes unnoticed: belief in God. Due to the efforts of many smart people over the course of many years, scholars who are experts in the fundamental nature of reality have by a wide majority concluded that God does not exist. We have better explanations for how things work. The shift in perspective from theism to atheism is arguably the single most important bit of progress in fundamental ontology over the last five hundred years. And it matters to people … a lot.
Or at least, it would matter, if we made it more widely known. It’s the one piece of scientific/philosophical knowledge that could really change people’s lives. So in my view, we have a responsibility to get the word out — to not be wishy-washy on the question of religion as a way of knowing, but to be clear and direct and loud about how reality really works. And when we blur the lines between science and religion, or seem to contribute to their blurring or even just not minding very much when other people blur them, we do the world a grave disservice. Religious belief exerts a significant influence over how the world is currently run — not just through extremists, but through the well-meaning liberal believers who very naturally think of religion as a source of wisdom and moral guidance, and who define the middle ground for sociopolitical discourse in our society. Understanding the fundamental nature of reality is a necessary starting point for productive conversations about morality, justice, and meaning. If we think we know something about that fundamental nature — something that disagrees profoundly with the conventional wisdom — we need to share it as widely and unambiguously as possible. And collaborating with organizations like Templeton inevitably dilutes that message.
There’s no question that Templeton has been actively preventing the above message from getting across. By funding projects like the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion, the JTF has done its best to spread the impression that science and religion get along just fine. This impression is false. And it has consequences.
So I won’t directly work with or take money from the JTF, although I will work with people who do take money from them — money that is appropriately laundered, if you will — if I think those people themselves are worth supporting or collaborating with in their own right. This means that approximately nobody agrees with me; the Templeton-friendly folks think I’m too uptight and priggish, while the anti-Templeton faction finds me sadly lacking in conviction. So be it. These are issues without easy answers, and I don’t mind taking a judicious middle ground. It’s even possible that I’ll change my mind one way or another down the road, in response to new arguments or actions on the part of the parties involved.
And if anyone is tempted to award me the Templeton Prize, I will totally accept it! And use the funds to loudly evangelize for naturalism and atheism. (After I pay off the mortgage.)
I can’t speak for Sean Carroll, but for myself, I don’t have any particular desires about what god should or shouldn’t be. I wasn’t brought up to believe in god, so I never really started. All I can do is look at the concepts of god that the people who DO believe in god have, and evaluate them. I have noticed that, while people have wildly differing versions of what they think god is, the one commonality is that none of them have any evidence for their particular concept of god.
I’m trying to follow the reasoning here. People like Sean Carroll, by which I take to include myself, since I share his lack of belief in any gods, would prefer a comprehensible god… because we want a god that’s like a big smart guy so we can feel good about being smart? Because then we would be like god with our big intellects, and that would please us, despite the fact that we don’t believe in this god? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but that just seems immensely incoherent. We don’t believe in god(s). Whether it’s a comprehensible concept or not. The god-concepts that ARE comprehensible are patently false. The ones that are incomprehensible are useless due to being incomprehensible. If you can’t understand it then logically, you can’t present evidence either for or against its existence, so why bother worrying about it? This is obviously not the sort of god that answers prayers or gives a fig about the welfare of a bunch of talking apes. Those are characteristics of a comprehensible god.
Of course not, but then, as I said, you’re left with a god that has none of the characteristics that make it worth worshiping. Not only is it not worth praying to such a god, it’s hardly even worth spending more than a couple of seconds thinking about it. It’s a god that has no features that would enable us to tell it apart from a god that doesn’t exist at all.
You can’t talk about incomprehensible gods and then betray your belief in Satan. Satan is a comprehensible supernatural being and it’s as certain as certainty can get that Satan does not exist. If you believe in incomprehensible gods then belief in Satan is hypocrisy.
You don’t need god to have love. If you did, that would be evidence in favor of the existence of some sort of god. Since there’s no evidence of different rates of love-feelings for believers and non-believers, nor for believers in different gods, we can dismiss this insulting argument which also, by the way, has the effect of dehumanizing atheists as loveless automatons, which has the effect of enabling and condoning discrimination against them. Regardless of your feelings about the existence of god, I would think that any ethical person should be able to recognize that claiming that a whole class of people are unable to experience love as fully as everybody else is wrong, cruel, and discriminatory.
I must have a lousy understanding of traditional Christianity then. From what I can tell, the Yahweh in the Bible is definitely an empirical object – a disembodied mind that uses telepathy to talk to humans and telekinesis to answer their prayers or smite his enemies. That’s a being which, although it may be invisible, is an empirical object with characteristics that can be tested for and proven or disproven. And of course that sort of empirical object has been disproven by now.
It’s only since the advent of scientific explanations for the origin of life and the origin of the universe that Christians (and other theists) have had to invent a god that does have any testable characteristics–i.e., a non-empirical object.
So please tell me, is it me who misunderstands what you mean by “traditional Christianity” or you who misunderstands what is meant by “empirical object”?
It is arrogant to believe (or know) what you believe (or know) is all there is to to believe (or know). This is true whether you are a scientist or a person of faith.
Seems to me to be a good place to start a real discussion. The rest of this is a waste of time.
@ Barry H.
It certainly would!
Of course, scienctists don’t claim to know that what they know is all there is to know… otherwise they’d stop doing science (h/t Dara Ó Briain). In fact, as Feynman noted, scientists are generally pretty comfortable living with doubt.
But scientists do know that what they do know means that many things that other people believe (or claim to know) cannot be true, as Sean outlined in his Skepticon 5 talk.
Unfortunately, the people who believe (or claim to know) that those things which cannot be true are true think they know that what scientists know is not true or (perhaps more often) don’t even know what scientists know.
You know?
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*scientists (where’s autocorrect when you need it?)
@ Leon du Toit
Who are you asking?
Religion is clearly more than simple theism [“belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.” NOAD], but theism is at the core of religion (or, of most religions, depending on your definition of “religion”).
Most (gnu) atheists take a definition along the lines of “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods” [NOAD again; the first, indicating the most commonly used, of three meanings cited]. As I said above: “… any non-theistic religion isn’t a religion per se; call it philosophy, world view or life stance.”
Anthony Grayling, Ideas That Matter:
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Hi Sally Strange,
Good to talk with you. You certainly ask good questions. It’s obvious from your posts that you’re an intelligent and insightful person.
When I talk about whether God, I’m talking about what Traditional Christianity teaches about his essence. Is he essentially empirical or not? Traditional Christianity teaches that he’s essentially nonempirical, that is, not possessing spatial or temporal properties. Since he’s, according to Christianity, the creator of all that exists, which includes all sensory objects, it would make no sense for him to be an empirical object himself. That does not mean, however, that he cannot, if he so chooses, allow himself to be expressed to humanity in sensory ways, which may explain the biblical passages where he communicates with humans. In my opinion, much of the Bible cannot be interpreted literally. A lot of what we see in the Bible is allegory. A lot is historical as well, and when some claim that God “punishes,” or “inflicts,” bad things on people, I think that this is the primitive interpretation of the people living then. God would not do these things. When we here talk of “Hell,” for example, we should not take this too literally. I believe that “Hell,” could be a place of temporary enlightenment, (NOT a place of physical suffering) where we learn the good, beautiful, and holy, then all humans (and animals. I believe in animal rights) are saved.
Hi Sally Strange,
If I could add, the concept that God is nonempirical, is not an ad hoc adaptation, if you will, to the findings of empirical science. The notion that God is nonempirical is advocated by the philosopher Augustine, who lived from 354 to 430 C.E., and Thmas Aquinas, (1225/6-1274 C.E.) . They both lived before the Scientific Revolution. Speaking of the Scientific Revolution, it occurred in a Theistic milieu. And most of the early scientific thinkers, were religious, and didn’t believe that there was any “conflict,” between empirical science, and their religious beliefs. God created the world for us to investigate. (James Hannam, an historian of science, has written an excellent book that, in my view, successfully shows that empirical science is in debt to Theism, ad Christianity in particular. The book is: THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE). You may be interested in reading the following interview with Dr. Hannam:http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/20/10-questions-with-the-genesis-of-science-author-james-hannam/
Also, the following book review: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/26/a-time-of-intellectual-triumphs/
Sorry, but Hell is the place or condition of unlove, where those who have chosen to hate rather than Love, now exist, perhaps Hitler, Moa and Stalin, etc.. Whether it is an eternal existence I don’t know and would hope not. Sally I don’t say that Atheists are not capable of Love, I’m sure they are, the argument is about the existence of God, not you or Sean’s ability to Love or not and I’m sure that you do Love, and I’m not saying you would go to a place of Hell of course not, and since you don’t believe in any such place, you should not be worried. Right?
Hi Brett. Thanks for the compliments.
There are more than one Christianities that style themselves as traditional. Any clues for me as to which tradition in particular you’re referring to? I.e., it’s obviously not Catholic–last time I checked they definitely think Hell is a real place–but what is it? And what makes it traditional?
If “he” has a gender then I’d argue that he must be empirical.
A thing that possesses neither spatial nor temporal properties… what does that mean? To me, the only way I can think of for such an object to exist is for it to exist in a different universe with different physical laws. But then, I’m not an astronomer or a theoretical physicist, so “temporal and spatial properties” are somewhat vague terms for me, and, I suspect, for you too. As always, more specificity would be helpful.
Why doesn’t that make sense? It would make more sense to me that a conscious being that created things would be a thing itself. Why would a not-thing desire to create things? And if it has a desire to create a thing, and then creates it, then it automatically has temporal and spatial properties.
That MAY explain those passages. A more parsimonious explanation is that humans were making things up, or misinterpreting their experiences, as we often do. And, if this god expresses himself to humanity in sensory ways, then he is an empirically testable object, at least for those times he’s “expressing himself.”
Yes, of course. Practically nobody interprets ALL of the Bible literally, and those who claim to don’t actually do it either. The thing is, they all have certain passages that they think SHOULD be literal, and they all pick different passage for interpreting literally, and different passages for interpreting as metaphors. There’s no rhyme or reason to which passage or which, the only trend is that people tend to eschew the particularly brutal passages about making rape victims marry their rapists and executing gay people.
That’s lucky, because if it were really your god doing those things, that would make him an evil monster who should be opposed by all moral people.
That’s lovely, but you have exactly as much evidence for your position as the Catholics who tell me that Yahweh really does want me to be tortured for eternity because I’ve done all kinds of naughty things with my lady bits, and because I don’t believe in him. Why should I believe you over them? And why should I believe you at all? All the evidence points to our minds being emergent phenomena of our physical bodies. There’s no evidence for telepathy or ghosts or communication with dead people, which is what we would expect to see if it were possible for a person’s consciousness and memories to continue on in some incorporeal form after their death.
Also, your Christianity sounds distinctly un-traditional to me. But I’m not an expert on the thousands of different Christian sects, so what do I know.
Just to reiterate: do you recognize that your god cannot be both non-empirical AND also interact with humans? If he’s interacting with humans, he’s empirical. If he’s not empirical, then he cannot interact with humans. If you disagree then we’re going to have to have a discussion about what “empirical” means.
Hi Tony Rz,
Nice to talk with you. The Bible makes many references to a place called “hell,” but it would be incorrect, in my view, to consider this a place of literal torment, or a place where one lives “forever.” If it’s a literal place, (it may just be a state of mind) it’s a place of enlightenment. That is, a place not unlike what Catholics call “purgatory.”
One of the many reasons I do reject Hell as a place of torment, and as a forever residence of some, or many, is that it contradicts God’s infinite Love.
Many reject God, I believe, because they see him as a “comic dictator,” who wills them unhappiness for one false move. This is wholly and completely wrong. God values our freedom, and wills our complete happiness and autonomy.
No, I’m not worried about going to hell. My concern is a practical concern about life in the here-and-now. Regardless of whether you intend it that way, claiming that “god is love” or other similar sentiments has the effect of positioning love as something that’s outside human beings and which can be differentially expressed in different communities–and that your community is the most lovingest because you’ve god the right god, and atheists, who haven’t got any gods, are naturally less able to love and care for their fellow humans. It’s false, which is bad, and it lends itself to prejudice against atheists, which is worse. And that’s regardless of your intention.
Hi Sally Strange,
Thank you for your intelligent response. When I refer to “Traditional Christianity,” I’m talking about a “generic,” type, similar to C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity.” The notion of a non-empirical God is accepted by most Traditional Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or protestent. Mormons are the only type of Christians, that I’m aware of, who believe in an empirical God, but there may be others. When I say “Traditional,” I mean those who accept that God is a Trinity, as defined by the Nicene Creed. This creed, which was formulated from Greek philosophy, in conjunction with reflections on the Bible, states that God id essential nonempirical, (although these words aren’t used).
When we refer to God as being a “he,” this is just metaphorical language. God the Father and the Holy Spirit are nonempirical, and when “he” is used, it’s pure metaphor. With Jesus, clearly we have a literal man. But this in no way implies that God chose to come to earth as “man,” because mean are “better,” than women. Men and women are completely equal. It’s totally understandable to find the Trinity confusing, strange, even contradictory. If God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we have the Father and Holy Spirit as “nonempirical” and the son as bodily, obviously meaning he’s empirical. But Christianity, as I understand it, has always, or for most of its existence, stated that God is essentially nonempirical. So, one could argue that he came in the “form” of a man, as Jesus, but his essence is nonempirical. Or, how it all is rendered coherent is beyond our comprehension. That probably sounds like a cop out, I know.
The reason that the notion of God being an empirical object himself, doesn’t make sense is that, if he’s created all empirical objects, then being an empirical object himself, would indicate that, he must of created himself. But to create himself, he must exist prior to himself, which is contradictory. He must have been created by another god, but then we have an infinite recess of gods, since that god, being empirical, must have a god, and so forth.
I don’t pretend to understand what it means to say that God is nonempirical. But an analogy may be helpful. This of universal concepts, such as what we find in mathematics. 2+2=4 is nonempirical. It will always be true, whether humans or some other comparably intelligent being exists to know it. Even if our universe ceases to exist tomorrow, it will be true. Perhaps God exists in a similar fashion.
When we talk of God “willing” or “desiring,” it’s not, as Aquinas has argued, in a way exactly like us. It’s what he calls “analogical,” in that, it transcends our ability to fully grasp. god possesses a mind, an infinite mind, but it’s much different from ours. I share your skepticism as to how a nonmaterial being can do these things. But how light can be a wave and a particle escapes us all too!
With respect to biblical interpretation, I’m certainly no expert, and my take on it could be all wet. But I believe that it must be done in an intelligent, coherent fashion, not in a way that is comforting to the interpreter. the Bible is not infallible, in my view. This does make me perhaps heretical. It’s an amalgam of history, metaphor, inspiration, instruction. Since God is love, he would not do the terrible things that are mentioned in some passages of the Bible. These are best explained as the interpretations of the people who lived then, and they clearly possessed moral views that we rightly consider abhorent. This is what I would call the “Biblical Baggage,” to put it, very mildly. It’s a terrible mistake for Christians, and others to view these passages as God’s will, or punishment. These are the morally primitive, and morally abhorent views of individuals who wrote the particular biblical passages in question.
Certainly the idea of “hell” being a place of eternal torment, is wholly inconsistent with God’s love. If one believes that God is loving, infinitely loving, he would never send someone there. Most Christians, who are sophisticated, do not believe that, if hell exists, it’s literal torment. The Catholics who talked to you, Sally, are not representative of the offical Catholic position, which is that Hell, is seperation from God, and NOT eternal torment. The theological understanding of hell, in Catholicism, is in flux. The theologian Hans Urs Von Balasther, who was a devout Catholic (Pope John Paul the second called him his favorite theologian) argued that hell may exist, but it makes sense to believe no one goes there.
I agree with you that the concept of our minds arising from the brain makes sense. Certainly the findings of neuroscience, that mental phenomena arise from neural activity is reasonable. But there may be more to the story than we think. at the end of the ninteenth century, it was argued by some that discipline of physics was finished. Quantum mechanics, etc., put an end to that notion. Similarly, Near Death Experiences, where people know of thigs they could not possibly know about, if we’re just brains, is best explained as a consequence of these individuals leaving their bodies, which leads to the extrapolation that we may be more than neurons firing.
I agree with you that the notion of an immaterial being communicating with material beings, God with humans, respectively, seems to make no sense (Many objected to Descartes notion of an immaterial mind communicating with a material brain, on the same grounds), but, perhaps there’s more to the picture than our finite minds can grapple with? Again, I don’t understand how light can be a wave a nd a particle at the same time, this seems incoherent, but it seems to be true.
Hi Sally, I’m sorry if there’s any spelling errors, etc., I just sent it, without proofreading my comments. I hate it when I do that 🙂
Hi Sally Strange,
I certainly agree with you that atheists are just as moral, and loving as believers in God. It is bigoted for some to assert that atheists or agnostics are not as moral or loving as others. In fact, many atheists are more benevolently motivated to be moral, than many so-called Christians, since some of the latter are moral out of fear of God, than because they love humanity, or because it’s just the right thing to do.
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Yeah. Looks like it’s time to have a chat about the meaning of the word “empirical.”
Hi Sally Strange,
I define what one can detect with one’s senses, as empirical.
lol, the use of “must of” rather than “must have” is also cringeworthy.
On further reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that any scientist who takes money from the United States government gives implicit credence to the notion that torture is okay.
Nobody’s motives are pure. Money is inherently tainted. Life is unfair.
With respect to God’s existence, the great philosopher Thomas Aquinas, (1225-1274 C.E.) has more than a few interesting things to say. His “five ways,” which are found in his golden treasure the SUMMA THEOLOGIAE, show why belief in God is more reasonable than not. Some atheists (not all, of course) seem to have not fully grappled with Aquinas, which is understandable, considering the plethora of words that came from his hand. (I haven’t read all his works; very few people have) But he’s a profoundly formidable thinker, like many in the middle ages. (C.S. Lewis once remarked, being a former atheist himself, that atheists must be careful what works they read, of this period, since it could be hazardous to their atheism.)
brett: I’m glad my work entertains you 🙂
So I’m passing by a bit late, and my real concern is Templeton. But there was comments from Ian Durham and Joe Morton that I find it interesting to respond to:
ID: “It is precisely because a divine being, by definition, isn’t natural or physical that science really doesn’t logically lead directly to atheism.”
“Really, the most scientifically honest stance on “G(g)od(s)” is agnosticism.”
JM: “While it is true that theism is terrible science, Naturalism nevertheless remains an untenable Philosophical position.”
It is easy to see that such analysis is completely erroneous. Ever since thermodynamics could exclude magic action from local, closed systems the gap for existence of magic has decreased to now vanish.
Dawkins makes a good analysis that since we observes that the universe starts out simple, we can reject any idea of pre-universe magical designers. And the WMAP 9 year respectively Plancjk 4 year data releases shows us a universe that beyond reasonable doubt has resulted froma spontanous process as thermodynamics applied to such zero energy tells us. No magic has written its signature in the CMB as it must.
And it is arguably, from the eternal inflation consistent convex inflation potential found by Planck, that our laws are mostly locally derived.
Hence we can test physicalism beyond reasonable doubt, the natural proposed theory based on these observations, that physics is all there is (physicalism).
It is true that philosophically there will always remain a possibility since a zero possibility is observationally unachievable. But empirically the deed is done, nothing that could have magic existence, make magic actions, can exist when using the same standards of evidence that we use elsewhere.
Again it is true that philosophically there will always remain an unphysical ‘existence’ based on no action. But empirically the deed is done, nothing that could have magic existence can exist when using the same standards of evidence that we use elsewhere.
And it is true that philosophically there will always remain an unphysical ‘law maker’ possibility based on the arguable set of a few pre-universe physics laws. But empirically the deed is done, it is an unlikely possibility when using the same standards of evidence that we use elsewhere.
As for atheism vs agnosticism, here is my analysis:
– Atheism is the empirical position. Such an atheist has either never heard of religious magic or never seen religious magic.
– Agnosticism is the philosophical position. Such an agnostic rejects the current empirical knowledge on the subject.
Here is where it becomes fuzzy.
It seems to me most accommodationists, those who have a remaining belief in belief, protects their and others belief by taking an agnostic position. (Alas, there is no statistics as of yet.)
When they do that, they seem to frequently do that from a pure religious position of theological claims. As Fisher’s ref has it “they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.”
Either they make the theological NOMA claim on remaining gaps or, worse, they deny that we know that magical agents using prayers, making souls or making universes do not exist (which is the same as claiming NOMA wholesale, say). This is testable:
– I believe the prayer studies that would observe magic healing (say) are done to 2 or 3 sigma.
– The standard particle model completion studies (Higgs field) that would observe _any kind_ of magic biology including souls, or prayers for that matter, are done to 5 sigma.
– The CMB studies that would observe magic thermodynamics involved in processes ending up with universes are done to 7 sigma as regards inflation (possible multiverses) and at least 10 sigma as regards _this_ universe (DM lensing in the CMB) – maybe even 25 sigma as some Planck results go.
And so on and so forth.
I’m loath to call such religious agnostics, to my knowledge most of them, atheists. They are a-”magical agents”, but they are not a-magical as regards theist claims in that it is, for them, a real area that somehow must be specially protected.
Likewise I have a hard time place them as “non-religious” as already noted. They are non-believers in some religious claims, but not non-believers in religion and all its claims.
Fuzzy. Of course, it is intended to be, as everything theological.
And likewise to Bret Lythgoe:
Theology? Really!? What could faith-based theology say on the existence of magic, or anything really?
And even so, it is clear that this is an entirely empirical question, see my response to Ian Durham and Joe Morton above.
Whatever is your belief, this is mine, God is Love, the Love with which we Love regardless of whether we believe in His existence or not. So if you want to remain an Atheist so be it. So whatever you do be compassionate, be gentle, be kind, be forgiving, be helpful, be considerate, and if you do harm to another ask for forgiveness and treat all others as you would have them treat you.
Then, according to his own definition, Tony Rz doesn’t believe in god, but in love. He just calls love “god” for no apparent reason.