Indeed, and it is because I am an athiest that I can choose the philosophies, ethics and values of a range of religions, and from secular moralists, philosophers and thinkers, and assign divinity to none.
Without being an expert on the subject, it does seem that every civilization, the world over, has included belief in gods which are aligned to the logic of their world. From the pantheistic beliefs of native americans, to the cat worshippers of Egypt and the ancient foundations of Hinduism or aboriginal DreamTime....
The fact that none of these civilizations shared a common god is a clue, for me, that god is a construct of our thinking and very much in tune with the natural and historical context. I can see that this could be a sort of metaphor - when I was a practising christian (at Sunday School age), and engaged in discussion with my Methodist lay-preacher grandfather, even as a child I understod that God was a 'state of mind' - a level of goodness to be aspired to by means of a clear conscience, a sesne of responsibility for others and general doing good not harm. Heaven likewise - certainly not a geographical place in the sky. The only difference being that 'heaven' was your final position, a static stae, whereas while still alive, we could still improve our score!
My job used to entail an annual dinner with a man with 'The Very Reverend' in front of his name, and he was of the opinion that the effect of the best of the arts on the human mind was exactly the same as religious contemplation, and that he thought that the arts and religion fulfilled much the same function, and was prepared to admit to a certain agnosticism.
When I was a child, my grandmother used to get me to sit on the rug with a seashell in my hand, and she would say 'hold that, and think, until you know who who made it' I did sit, for a long time, many times, and the answer for me was always a mystery, but a material process. The tantalisation of the undiscovered nature of life, but the possibility that if electricity, heart transplants, evolution had all been discovered, then one day the processes behind creation would foillow.
And that, it seems, is the challenge for religion today. The Ancients had little knowledge of the empirical scientific advances which have showed us just how sophisticated natural phenomena are, but once we do know, aren't we going to suppose that the answer, as yet unknown, is another level of the same material processes?
I don't think that that means that any genuine wisdom which went hand in hand with religion is necessarily defunct. The beliefs of the native americans make absolute sense in thie relationship to survival, for e.g.
It is also, I think, a duty for 21stC religious people to ensure that they do not perpetrate outdated, often barbaric, beliefs and behaviours in the name of religion, from times when religion WAS society.
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