> step into the state of a man's spiritual condition and all bets are off

The religion best represented on HN, and that to which hew most commenters here, includes among its basic doctrines the tenet that all spiritual beliefs are equally invalid, and therefore equally meaningless, save only that religion's own such beliefs, which are believed to be empirical rather than spiritual. This makes it trivial for believers to produce public displays of simultaneous tolerance ("whatever works for you") and superiority ("but you can't claim it's The Answer because there is no one answer"), something which they find both personally satisfying and socially beneficial.

Of course, their beliefs are no more empirically demonstrable than those of any other religion, nor are they derived from pure reason as their adherents prefer to believe. For example, believers in this faith universally misunderstand the nature of religion, so as to imagine that no system of beliefs can be called religious save that it involve at least one deity; indeed, this misunderstanding constitutes a crucial slab in the foundation of their dogma, for on it rests the belief that they are virtuous skeptics who can't be fooled by mere religious faith, and are thus apart from and above (all other sorts of) believers:

> Some people [like my own worthy self] just aren't wired to be religious

Which leads us to a popular explanation, among atheists, for the vexatious popularity of other religions: that the human nervous system is so wired as to produce religious experience entirely by accident, and thus meaninglessly. [1]

Well, everyone else's nervous system, anyway; they themselves "aren't wired to be religious", obviously, because if they were, they'd have a religion, and atheism isn't a religion -- it can't be! It has no deity! -- so atheists aren't religious, so they must be "[not] wired to be religious", which must mean they're necessarily smarter and/or "more evolved" [2].

The former belief is hardly limited to atheists, of course, and is merely smug and pretentious. The latter, though, rests in a fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of evolution, and is thus utterly senseless; it is every bit as much a matter of faith as, for example, the idea of divine providence.

(How marvelous it is that these fellows presume to offer counsel on the subject of humility!)

The truth of the matter, of course, is that, if any of us are "wired to be religious", then all of us are. (All of us are.) The only remaining question, which applies equally well to all the many other filters inherent in our perceptual mechanisms, is whether we recognize it as such and attempt to account for its effect, or instead fail so to do and believe its input to be a reliable representation of reality.

That latter category is shared by theists and atheists alike -- each believing, however he represent himself in public, that he has found The Answer, and that those in the other camp must just not really understand the world, because if they did, they wouldn't be in the other camp.

The former category is sparsely populated by comparison, and, would-be bodhisattvas excepted, most of us in it tend to keep our mouths pretty well shut on the subject; neither a theist nor an atheist is often well equipped to comprehend an areligious perspective on anything, and to detail one thus rarely has any effect save to start a pointless gunfight. (Besides, being a member of neither camp makes it very easy to get along with those in both, and why not do so?)

I break my habit of silence on this occasion not because I have any hope of unusually productive discussion on the matter, but instead simply in order to place myself outside the argument which will probably ensue from my observation that I'm favorably impressed, sir, by your bravery and courage in contravening publicly the popular faith, and by the altruistic impulse which motivated you to do so. Irrespective of the reception you encounter in doing so, the act itself speaks well of your honorable character, and that's something I'm always glad to see.

[1] An apparently popular work of atheology on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_Explained

[2] Think I'm kidding? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100303-liber...