Conversations With My Father

My father and I have had some very interesting discussions about religion, especially over the past year or so. My father describes himself as 99-percent toward athiesm from agnosticism and I describe myself about 80-percent on that continuum. He still admits there may be something out there that we don't understand, perhaps something having to do with spirituality.

"You and I may vary in degree as we look at the continuum between theism and atheism (unfortunately, as I view it, some draw the dividing line between absolute theism and anything that asks questions) but as rational beings I do not see how we can fail to reject either finite end of the continuum. So you are at 80% and I am at 99% in terms of our questioning. We're both admitting we don't know all the answers. A possible difference could be that I might be more willing to bet that this is the only life I will ever have."

Very honest response.

Here's another interesting comment from my Dad.

"When I look back at my religious experiences, the belief in dogma vanished long ago. However, the models in terms of the behaviors I observed in some of the members of our church's congregation no doubt formed at least part of the template in becoming the person I would wish to be. It is my opinion that these deserving models are available to us in both the secular and sacred worlds."

Now here is a short e-mail I wrote to my Dad in response to some of his comments:

Dear Dad,

Thanks for the carefully and thoughtfully chosen words. I know I have said this before, but it seems that we are not as far apart as we think in our thinking.

I found this quote by you to be most interesting...

"If my life is governed by wanting to get by with whatever possible without having to suffer eternal punishment, this could conceivably lead to behavior injurious to others. If I am not inflicted with the original sin of Adam and Eve and if I am not destined as might be suggested in the Bible and later by the non religious Freud to be evil without imposed restraints then I might still devote my life to making things better for others which in the end makes things better for me as well."

This is very well said. It says a lot about free will and man's ability to create a strong morality with the help of reason and compassion. We don't do good because there is a bearded man in the sky who will punish us if we do wrong. We do right because we have deep and well thought-out ideas of what logically makes sense, so as to reach the highest ethical point possible.
Thanks again for the excellent food for thought. I hope my new blog helps generate more of this positive and interesting discussion.


I will always love and respect my Dad. I respect him perhaps most of all for having the courage to be a freethinker.