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   Rusty Ring (rustyring@universeodon.com)'s status on Tuesday, 08-Aug-2023 02:32:09 JST Rusty Ring

   in reply to

   @georgetakei Guy gets the difference between atheist and nontheist wrong. They're not synonyms.

   An atheist (despite the etymology of the word) has no religion: he or she rejects the notion of occult design in the universe. Nature is a system of random occurrences, having no greater implications.

   A nontheist just doesn't believe in the existence of gods. He or she may be religious (Buddhists), but rejects the notion of a mind somewhere running things, or cause and effect surviving a living actor.

   As a Zenner I run into this all the time with other Zenners who insist they're "atheists". Zen is a religion. Atheist Zen is no more doable than atheist Christianity. What we are is nontheists. We live in a universe of esoteric, unifying truths, but no gods.

   (Ideally. Some of us have gods too, but that's another rant.)

   Anyway, couldn't comment on the article so I said it here. Thanks for the think; it was otherwise interesting.