I am an Atheist.
Atheism seems to upset a lot of religious people.
I believe that you can only express faith in those things that you have experienced yourself, or that are at least consistent with your own experience such that their explanation strikes you as not unreasonable. I've spoken to a fair number of Christians and other Religious folks, and I have not found their rational and scientific arguments compelling. I've heard plenty of accounts from people who have been overwhelmed by an experience that they can only attribute to a specific higher power that wants them to read the Bible. I have not had this experience. With due reverence to God and the thousands of human religions, it would be immoral of me to profess a faith in something I call "God."
Ah, a Christian once said to me. Perhaps you have not found God, because you are not looking for God?
It took me a while to consider this. The follow-up question would be, how do you look for God? And how would you know it if you found it? In my experience, if you particularly want to experience something, it is not so hard to will yourself into a situation that is inconsistent with reality. How many times has one of us felt deeply stirred by a prospective lover, who did not share our feelings? In my experience of Love, the thing comes along when the soul is tranquil. Love is subtle and irrational. If you think you can find it by conscious effort, go right ahead. I find that looking for love leaves me frustrated and dizzy and dissatisfied and not quite prepared to believe that the actual thing has come along. I have found Love only when I have stopped looking for it, and instead focused on being a better me. If love is subtle and irrational, then an entity that exists on an entirely separate plane of reality, that has ostensibly created the Universe and every living thing, but which is averse to leaving obvious clues to humans that it exists ... well, I am not the fool to go looking for It. It knows where to find me. I'll shut up and watch, and listen, and feel, and if it comes to me, it will, and if it doesn't come to me, then that must also be It's will.
So, you believe that those who seek God are fools? You are a smarmy Atheist after all!
No, I don't believe they are fools. Well, some of them are probably fools, and I expect plenty of them are earnest and true, and possibly come to entirely satisfying results - a wholesome, genuine faith in God. But, knowing me, if I were to try such a thing, I would be a fool. Your Mileage May Vary, and I will not condemn you as a fool for seeking God.
And you know what? Maybe a great many of them are fools - self-delusional in their false belief in the existence of God. Well, as long as I can get along with them on some level of universal morality or secular appreciation of the wide diversity of human, animal, earth, and mystical experience our shared reality has to offer, that's fine with me. It's the minority of murdering wackos who are morally justified by their overpowering, desperate delusions that I take exception to.
Mystical? How is mystical secular?
Well, I'd be a fool if I sought to understand God, but I'd also be a fool to reject the mystical experiences that don't happen every day. Say, the way the clouds, or good artwork impact you, or that strange feeling you get at times ... strange pulses of emotion, and physical sensation ... even good scientists can't explain everything. Well, if you can't explain it, you can't reject it out of hand. I chose to cherish it ... I mean, after all, a lot of the thrill of life is running up against and experiencing new things, whether you choose to puzzle them out or not. For all I know, all this stuff is God.
I digress: from the moral professions of a lot of Religionists, a lot of mystical experiences, like sex and art and music and getting high and crazy hallucinations, are actually distractions from the very mundane, un-mystical God. I am not seeking the mundane, unmystical God that can not contain mystical experience. That ... that does not appeal to me. I want my all-powerful, all-knowing God to also encompass the mystical ... it only seems sensible to me. But I'm not so cocky to reject the idea that maybe God actually is boring and mundane, I mean, who am I to profess God's true nature?