Posts by Elayne

Quote from Cassius

I agree to this extent - that I don't like the term "self-generated" or even "self-arising" and I am not suggesting that they are self-generated even under the suggestions I am making. What this text seems to clearly indicate to me is that due to natural movements of particles just like all others the images become enmeshed in ways that were not generated by an actual object in the first place, just like any kind of wave is going to be altered by contact with another wave. It's in our minds that we assemble them and believe them to be actual centaurs. I am not sure I even see the issue here or what would need to be left unexplained? Certainly our greater knowledge gives us greater insight as to what particles and waves are ever-present in the "atmosphere" around us, but the basic insight that our senses are interacting with material things that are "flying through space" seems to me to be pretty reasonable(?)

Cassius , those are two issues:

1) I am saying I do not recommend assuming that the self generated description was about the same thing as where he talks _elsewhere_ about recombinations of images. I can't see any basis for making that assumption-- you'd have to say his self generated language was misleading if he actually meant recombination, and I am not convinced he was being unclear. If he was unclear, it could be a result of failing to distinguish between images and whatever the "seeds" of the images would be-- but it's uncharacteristic for him to leave out something like that. The little section about self generated images sounded pretty intentional. I think we either take it as written or leave it in a suspense file.

2) Yes, he's making (elsewhere) an analogy about images recombining and then our brains misinterpreting the results as an explanation for our imagination of centaurs and such. He apparently didn't conceive of human imagination being a process which does not actually require something entering the brain from the outside, and this was an inaccurate but fascinatingly creative idea! In the same way, he thought images from outer space passing into the brain caused humans to believe in gods-- he did not know our brains could produce their own sensory cortex content. It's like saying the explanation for hallucinations people have in sensory deprivation tanks would be something passing through the tanks into the brain. It's a valiant attempt to explain complicated neurological processes.

I am very reluctant to explain away the passage describing images as self arising without an extremely clear indication. I think there is a desire, which I understand, to stretch Lucretius to fit our current evidence... but that doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Imo it is better to pull out the parts which are confusing and don't fit the rest, and leave those questions open. That is what we do in science-- when there is weird data we don't know what to do with, we make note of that. Sometimes later it becomes clear what was going on.

When scientists have given in to the urge to finagle data in order to make it fit the rest, this has caused a delay in understanding what was really happening.

Unless there is some translation error, such that self generated does not mean what we think of today (meaning modern translators need to use a more accurate phrasing), the wording there seems very different from images which form as a result of prior images being merged. That would not be self generated, because the original images arose in the usual way-- anymore than a mule is self generated just because it comes from a donkey and a horse. If Lucretius meant recombined rather than self generated and used confusing language in the original, perhaps it was just sloppy writing-- that doesn't seem very likely, but I'm willing to leave that possibility on the table.

Leaving some of these odd bits unexplained, maybe a list of them, would be useful in case further documents are discovered which elaborate these ideas more clearly.

Mystical is one of those tricky words, because it's usually used to refer to some form of non-material reality. My own philosophy has nothing like that. But I value the pleasure of practicing, for lack of a better term, non-conceptual awareness... fully apprehending my aliveness within a magnificent universe. Awareness that neither I nor any other part of the universe can be fully contained within or signified by any concept or symbol, and on top of that, everything is changing and interacting-- but more than what I can put in words, because experiences are always more than concepts. Not anything that fits into a real Buddhist framework.

I think only material reality has this property. If the "true reality" were abstract/ideal, it would fully be encompassed by ideas and language-- and we know from experience that this isn't the case, that material reality is always more than anything we can say about it, because of subjectivity, qualia. For me, it's not that reality is transcendent of materiality but the very materiality itself which produces ineffability.

Metaphors can be useful as an evocative tool... but any attempt to literalize a metaphor about reality, to make the idea more important than material reality, takes the life out of things.

Whenever people start talking about piety, I feel a strong desire to goose them in the ribs. I feel like they are missing the point somehow. Metaphorically, they need a dose of a trickster god. Reality has too much of a ... playful feeling, maybe... for me to adopt piety as a goal. Imo there is enough humorousness in Epicurus' own words that I think he completely got that. Philodemus... I'm not so sure.

Don -- how do you think Philodemus' apparent irritation at the comedians intersects with Epicurus using comedic insults against other philosophers? And with the multiple instances of pointed humorous snarkiness against multiple folks in Lucretius?

I wonder if Philodemus just didn't have much of a sense of humor, or if there was something particular about those specific comedians. Humans haven't changed that much-- I'm sure SNL/Colbert Show type humor was just as much fun then as now... and there are always a few humorless types too. "Punching up" humor also has a long history of political use. Court jesters, etc. Often seen as a safer way to let those in power know they are crossing lines that might lead to revolt.

Godfrey when I read people saying that absence of pain is boring, I am completely confused. That makes no sense whatsoever-- boredom is one of the pains, so that is like saying absence of pain is pain, or 0=1. It's nonsensical. It makes me wonder if they have even read their own writing or thought about it. Where was their editor, lol?

Don I'm curious why you would say "even you have experienced" peak experiences-- why the "even"? Aren't these just part of being human? I guess there are some people who don't have them but I thought most of us did.

I don't think any religious orientation at all is required for these human experiences... I don't think a person's mind needs to be "prepared" by having any sort of beliefs. There may well be a type of preparation involved, but I think it would be of a different sort and maybe would involve openness to new experience. Willingness to be surprised... willingness to experience intense sensations. Perhaps practice at being fully present and savoring?

As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps the intensity may be somewhat lessened or moderated, made more manageable, by putting them in a narrative or other framework, including a literalist one. I am able to enjoy them sans overlay, but maybe that's too wild and frightening for many people. I think that is why meditators are encouraged to have a framework and a teacher, because some will be derailed by the uninterpreted experience. There have been cases of psychosis.

So perhaps I should be careful saying the framing isn't necessary, just because I haven't needed it. I guess my frame is that I have confidence in the flexible functioning of my brain and have no fear that peak experiences will disrupt anything-- rather, they enhance pleasure of ordinary life. I hope that a science education would reduce fear for others. It would be interesting to know if psychotic reactions were more common in those who had less confidence in science.

Don Oh, sorry, I was unclear-- I do agree with you, at least partially! I was siding with you against a purely literalist interpretation.

I think your idea about the answer to "what it was about" is definitely interesting, and although I don't interpret the experiences that way, the idea of other Epicureans doing so doesn't create any objections for me.

For me, I prefer to add as little as possible, interpretation-wise-- I find that leaving it un-analyzed retains the pleasure of the memory more intensely.

I mean this in a different way from looking at the evolutionary and neurological basis-- there are mechanisms, but that is different from what you are talking about. Discussing mechanisms doesn't dent the experience for me.

Ok, I've just realized why I don't do what you describe-- that would be an instrumental process. Using the experience to accomplish another goal. Which for me automatically downgrades the pleasure of the primary experience.

Writing a poem about it doesn't have the same effect, because in that case I'm just trying to evoke the memory of those feelings.

Thank you for triggering that insight-- I haven't really put words to that before.

This is one of those things where I think it depends on the individual, so people can experiment with whether they want to use such experiences instrumentally or leave them as they are-- whichever brings them the most pleasure.

That could be said about a literalist interpretation too, except in this philosophy, if such an interpretation clashes with findings on material reality, it seems to me it would be booted... I'm just not sure how to support doing so without more of Epicurus' writings. I don't think he would cling to saying the things about elementary particles that are now clearly wrong-- but is there anything in the text to back me up on that? Something to suggest "if I find an error in what I've said here, I will change my mind." If so, the same line could be applied to literal images from outer space.

I see no clear bright line, if we take _any_ non-sense/feeling evidence as factual-- anything a person or group of people experiences as strongly and definitely communicated straight to their brains from outer space or wherever would have to be regarded on the same basis as repeated measurements of a physical item. Nobody here is saying that, but what establishes a limit? Are we going to say we are limited to whatever Epicurus said? Are we limited by logic (egads)? Are we limited by baseline commonality of experience, and if so, why would that line be drawn to exclude atheists who don't attach supernatural meaning but also to exclude those who say it is fundamentally supernatural-- such a position would still be a minority position.

I also think the literalist interpretation is material in name only, because it doesn't admit the possibility of sensory falsifiability. There's always a material god of the gaps to retreat to, if a person decides in advance or against sense evidence that the gods are literally a source of images in the brain, based on inner certainty. It is like slapping a word "material " on a supernatural paradigm. I don't think Epicurus would be pleased-- but I can't prove it. I hope I am missing some way of doing so.

Don , the times I have had those experiences, they have not been what I would call cognitive but more ineffable. In my experience it requires a significant degree of backing away from the peak before any sort of explanatory stuff gets piled on, and the words as _explanations_ are superfluous and baseless... but as evocative communication, words have some use.

It's when people come away from the peak that they incorporate their beliefs into what happened. So people who are fully grounded in a physical universe vs supernaturalism are not going to add religious interpretations. The experiences retain their full poetic quality. It's a bit ironic to me that the scientists are the ones who seem best able to sustain the poetic approach towards these feelings, rather than being concrete, lol.

It baffles me why imagination is seen as somehow insulting or inferior, vs having a literal image from a literal being... I find the human imagination to be astonishing and marvelous! A godlike feature, indeed.

I could certainly see the point in using hyperbolic language to communicate the intensity and ineffability of what people feel... a problem these days is that too many take that language literally, as explanation instead of as a description of feeling. They take it as pseudoscience instead of as poetry.

But DeWitt said Epicurus was opposed to poetry. So Idk what that means when it comes to his statements about gods.

timrobbe -- in all of these examples, Frankl is ignoring that pleasure is exactly what creates the sense of meaningfulness! He is making the same mistake as the Cyrenaics-- only counting immediate present moment sensory pleasure as pleasure. Epicurus divided _all_ feelings into pleasure or pain, so the pleasure of meaningfulness, no matter what triggers it, is pleasure.

IMO, I would avoid viewing friends as instruments, because that will decrease your pleasure in friendship. We have abundant evidence that focusing on extrinsic rewards, a reward viewed as secondary to an instrument rather than intrinsic to it, decreases pleasure in the instrument used. Read Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards. The pleasures of friendship are not really separable from the friend-- no need to dissect relationships like that. Here I differ from Epicurus, who emphasized both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of friendship-- but I do so for pleasure maximizing.

Pleasures are not interchangeable-- there's not just one thing, "pleasure", but specific and widely variable pleasurable feelings. What they have in common is that we enjoy them, but in different ways. Epicurus said that if pleasures were all equal in distribution and intensity they would be alike, and what he was pointing out was that this isn't the case. So it's not really using a friend for generic pleasure but the specific pleasures of friendship.

Meaning itself is just pattern recognition and may or may not be pleasurable. 2+2=4 means something. But meaningfulness is the feeling of pleasure attached to certain patterns, usually social meanings.

When you keep that in mind, it should be easy to see that meaningfulness of friendship is a huge pleasure, and the same for work that feels meaningful.

Even the pleasure of suffering under certain situations creates pleasurable meaningfulness that is stronger than the pain. Think about grieving someone you loved deeply, after the acute pain has lessened-- there's a sense of deeply pleasurable meaning in knowing one has loved enough to grieve. Or think about suffering from fatigue at a job when the income is used to care for one's family-- there can be a feeling of meaningfulness in knowing one cares that much for one's family which is more pleasurable than the bare fatigue. If not, a person wouldn't likely value those types of suffering. Pleasure provides the value.

Some people prefer these sorts of meaningfulness pleasures more than any others, because they can be so intense.

Joshua yes! And let me add-- it rests on a false dichotomy between facts and feelings. A person who says this believes facts are objective, universally known to be true, when all perceptions are made from the POV of a subject (although often compared to reported perceptions of other subjects). There exists no known universal POV. The way we know our perceptions are "factual" (even if we don't realize it) is by their reliability/predictability. We learn this from infancy, by repeated observations.

So both sensory perceptions (data) and the reliability conclusions we draw from them are made by subjects, and feelings are felt by subjects. It's true we don't smell with our ears, nor do we hear with our feelings, and _that_ is what the quote is trying, clumsily, to get at, while bashing feelings.

Some people do try to draw perceptual conclusions with their feelings-- they want something to be true, which doesn't make it true. Maybe they want it to be true that a hurricane isn't going to get their house, so they don't evacuate, for instance. But their feelings of not wanting the hurricane forecast to be accurate are just as real as the hurricane!

Some miscellaneous thoughts...

Don, as far as atoms or molecules and their shapes-- Epicurus was talking about indivisible particles, which would be what we now call elementary particles. He reasoned that they would have to be innumerable, and that isn't what things appear to be at present. There's no strong reason why elementary particles would have to be innumerable, and right now it looks like there are a fairly small number of types. I do think he was incredibly insightful, and I would have been fine with these ideas as _hypotheses_ rather than as conclusions.

On the multiple explanations-- that is also ok but I don't see mention of the possibility of explanations that have not been thought of yet.

The multiple answers part reminds me of medicine today. When we write our "Assessment and Plan" section of medical notes, the assessment contains a "differential diagnosis"-- the possible diagnoses that would fit the patient's symptoms, ranked in order of likelihood according to best fit. There's always the awareness that there could be something else not listed. And then there's a plan for how to pin things down, what tests we are going to do. Some of the tests clearly rule out certain possible diagnoses... other times we are just improving the reliability of our working diagnosis.

I don't know if there is a word for the group of possible conclusions in physics, a sort of differential diagnosis of matter.

At least one of the conclusions Epicurus thought could have no possible other explanation is longer considered accurate-- the concept of "void." As far as I can tell, physicists today consider a "pure vacuum", even between atoms or particles, to be an idea, not something that actually exists. Another is the conclusion that the universe had no beginning-- that is unclear, but there's no reason IMO that material reality with a beginning re-introduces the possibility of supernatural gods. As Martin has said, for our current purposes, the universe has been around long enough that it might as well have had no beginning.

It seems like a waste of time to me to get upset about research findings which suggest some of our fundamental understandings about the nature of reality need to be overturned. This happens every so often, and I think it is wisest to be willing to abandon _any_ conclusion no matter how much we care about it, or at least hold a particular conclusion more loosely when it is challenged. Sometimes experimental data throws all our models in disarray-- we don't know what it means, whether the data had issues or our models have issues, but there's no reason to insist on which way it is pending further investigation.

Epicurus thought anxiety was produced by the unknown, but I will say from my clinical experience that it is more often produced by not having learned to be comfortable with the unknown. The cure for an anxious patient who can't let go of the need to be sure is not, it turns out, further evidence or hard evidence-- that doesn't work. It makes them more anxious, which is counter-intuitive. The treatment is learning that uncertainty doesn't kill them, and that they can go on enjoying life even if they don't know everything. We would not have known this solution, which is counter to what Epicurus thought, if we had not done research. I've helped patients with this in person enough times to be convinced of it with my own senses.

For example, parents who want to reassure an anxious child that there are no monsters will intuitively make a show of shining a light in the closets and under the bed to prove nothing is there. For anxious children, this backfires in them requiring more and more elaborate reassurance, often taking hours. When young, some will respond to "monster spray" on the pillow, but this doesn't work for the truly anxious. There is no level of proof they will accept. What does work? Saying "I see you are afraid of monsters these days. I remember when I used to be afraid of that. Can you draw me a picture?" and just proceed as if their fear isn't anything to worry about-- it is normal.

Even though Epicurus thought that at a certain point, there was no pleasure reason to keep investigating phenomena, I am not sure I agree with that, besides just the pleasure of science. Much of what we have learned so far about physics has been used to develop real world applications. How do we know yet what we might be able to do with more information which might help solve problems and create more pleasure than pain? Yes, physics research led to nuclear weapons, but it also led to advances in medicine. We would have been able to relieve Epicurus' kidney stones today using technology from applied physics.

In medicine, we have a saying "don't marry your diagnosis too soon", which reminds me of what Epicurus said about not reaching premature conclusions.

For the earliest atomists, there was some sense evidence that matter is composed of particles smaller than we can see, rather than springing out of nothing. Some of it was partial and indirect, but it wasn't just an idea. Lucretius described a lot of it.

There was _not_ evidence regarding what the smallest particles looked like, at least not that I've seen so far. That's why both Martin and I said whoa, just a minute, in those sections.

And so far it has held up that when at least some evidence was used for conclusions, those conclusions have more often stood the test of time, but where only analogy was used, those conclusions have often been revised.

Cassius, is there any study of which types of convictions have been most overturned by DNA evidence? That would help me know whether I think courts are wise to use circumstantial evidence and how much leads to higher accuracy. Considering the stakes -- a person's life or freedom-- I hope we are relying on some measure of accuracy better than "we've always done it this way and it sounds like it would be right."

In medicine, we don't have a category "circumstantial evidence", but it sounds like it would apply to times when it looks like an infectious agent is the cause of a disease but Koch's postulates haven't been fully satisfied. It sounds like it would basically be uncertainty about a causal relationship. IMO that is not the same as a total lack of evidence. A total lack of sense evidence would be guessing the shapes of elementary particles in the time of Epicurus. There wasn't "circumstantial" evidence. Analogy is not evidence.

In medicine, situations of incomplete or indirect evidence can be acted on but not placed in a category of definite conclusions. They would be in the suspense account pending direct evidence, because we know those conclusions are more likely to need modifying later. There should not be a rush to decide, but we can still take action.

I think of an eyewitness account of an event as a situation of incomplete sense data-- the scene wasn't run multiple times, looked at up close and repeatedly. Often only a portion of the events are witnessed. It would be like a case study-- a lower degree of reliability. But it's still better than asking someone who didn't see any of it to draw a picture of a robber based on their imagination. The data lawyers call circumstantial is still sense data-- it's not an imaginary or indirect weapon, for instance, or an imaginary or indirect body. It's not someone having a dream that their neighbor is a witch and calling for a trial-- there are sense observations, even if incomplete.

So applying that to life after death-- there's zero sense evidence, despite people having the common intuition of it. Which means automatically that I don't have to consider it as worth worrying about-- I could stop there. If I want to, I can dig into biology, neuroscience, physics, for observations about how things work, the nature of things. But if I'm not interested, I can just say meh, haven't seen it done, come back when you have data and a mechanism.

Cassius, I think it's not quite that confusing, and that it's easy to make things sound deeper than they are.

When it comes to what I _know_, I stick to the Canon-- I don't put anything derived from reason in the "I know this" category. For prolepses, I do not include anything as known which contradicts my senses. Which rules out anything like supernatural gods, a realm of pure forms, string theory, Lawrence Krauss's ideas, elementary particles being hard bodies, or a universal consciousness which I could contact with my mind.

What I know with confidence is the data itself, confirmed by multiple encounters with reality and by the confluence of my senses, processed only to the unavoidable degree of those innate pattern recognitions which are inseparable from cognition. Any heuristics which are avoidable, like sunk cost, I can learn to avoid with practice.

Using the senses to obtain data does not require reason or the scientific method. It is a matter of direct encounter. If we don't start from that, all is confusion.

I also know my feelings directly, the only way feelings can be known. I have 100% confidence that my feelings are real.

The separate question is: how are these observations related to each other? What's causing the thing I'm observing? What's producing my prolepsis? What's triggering my feelings? What might be going on that I haven't yet directly or consciously observed? This is the question I think we are debating-- the mechanisms and explanations.

As I've mentioned before, I have a form of synesthesia. Certain words and feelings have colors and tastes for me. Those sensations are real-- I accept them. But what causes them? Does the word "bitter" actually throw off particles that bind with my taste buds? Do other people without synesthesia just not have sensitive taste buds, because they haven't trained them? That is a question not about my experience but about the cause.

My preference is to continue to always use evidence. That is the only way I know of to avoid getting fooled into thinking things like the multiverse must be real simply because it isn't ruled out. This is where the scientific method has been shown to be so useful in helping us rank reliability of conclusions on a scale (the scale itself being a prolepsis). It allows me to feel confident in explanations _about_ data. And this is the point where confident "enough" shows up.

On the degree of confidence, it is true that people can have different levels of preference and comfort, but if two people have agreed that the data was collected accurately and reproducibly, then there should not be confusion over what the p value _is_ and which conclusions are more reliable than others when there's a comparison. It's not arbitrary, because it is grounded in the senses.

Comparing experimental reliability is entirely different from deriving conclusions from logic alone (string theory, a realm of pure forms, analogies about shapes of what we can't see, what completely blissful beings would look like, bitter foods bind my taste receptors so bitter words must do the same) or intuition about causes (dreams come from outer space, this sensation I have of contacting an unseen intelligence _is_ caused by a being even though I have no sensory confirmation).

A prolepsis can help us identify a pattern, but it cannot tell us what the cause of the pattern is most likely to be.

Whenever you see me object to a conclusion, it is on the grounds that logic alone is different from experimental data with at least some idea of reliability to consider, no matter how minimal. Guessing at the shape of elementary particles based on analogy is reason based, not observation based. Nothing about reason based guesses is anything but hypothetical to me. All those things go in the tbd basket. I'm fine with people having different comfort levels once there's some sort of sense evidence-- but when there's zero sense evidence, I find it not a whit different from the world of pure forms.

So there's my bright line on causal explanations: at least _some_ sense evidence vs zero evidence, and then when I have some evidence, I choose the explanation with the highest available reliability to base my action decisions on, because that is the most secure way to achieve pleasure. If I want to dig a well, and the well is part of my pleasure requirement, a secure source of water-- I'm not going to hire a magician to advise me on where to dig. I'm going to use methods which have been demonstrated more reliable.

Godfrey, well... I was thinking poetically! Thinking about all the creatures in the universe, seeking out pleasure as if in an infinite, eternal dance-- it's so joyful to me to see life that way for all of us.

But yes, it would be interesting to look at actual research on the drive for pleasure in other species! I read a beautiful book on this a few months ago, and IMO the author comes soooo close to our philosophy but misses clearly naming pleasure as the drive. I considered emailing him and then I forgot... maybe worth doing.

Biology of wonder

Godfrey, this definitely resonates with me-- not a being or a consciousness but the various processes of inorganic matter becoming organic and organic matter developing. It reminds me of "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower" D thomas. For myself, I could even make a case for seeing divinity as desire, the drive for pleasure observed in all creatures with sufficient nervous systems to feel.

Bearing in mind our agreed on caveat for this group regarding secondary sources like Philodemus, I question whether this idea of gods _feeling_ congeniality or alienation for us is consistent with the assertion that they are entirely blissful.

In the first place, a _feeling_ of alienation is either a pleasure or a pain, because all feelings in EP are one or the other. Alienation sounds like a pain, something the gods would want to avoid, so if they feel alienation then they are not entirely blissful on a continuous basis and then by definition are not Epicurean Gods. If that is the correct translation-- if he said and meant feeling.

If a being feels congeniality for a human and then that human experiences pain-- let us even say pain impossible to avoid, which Epicurus agreed is a thing-- then to remain entirely and continually blissful, this being could not feel empathetic pain triggered by the pain of the human it feels congenial towards. And what kind of congeniality is that? Certainly not an anthropormorphic congeniality-- not the type of friendship Epicurus describes here in VS 56 "The wise man feels no more pain, when being tortured himself than when his friend is tortured" (which does not mean a wise man feels no pain when being tortured-- that's impossible-- but that the torture of a friend is like his own torture).

Gods who are unable to know how things are going with humans and are amongst their god friends who are not having pain would have no reason to experience empathetic pain. But if we start believing they can have some sort of relational connection with us, and that they have no sorrow at all over our pain, then we could at least say they would be of a very different nature than we are, in a way that we are not encouraged by Epicurus to emulate.

Christians, although many of them do believe their god has sorrow for us, have a mechanism for getting around any god attribute that a member does not understand-- they just have to say it is over their heads and that we can't understand the mind of god. However, nothing in Epicurus' original words implied creatures who would have incomprehensible features-- some behaviors about which we would have to shrug our shoulders and say well who knows, we can't understand gods. Instead, he has made them fairly anthropomorphic in what it would take to cause them pleasure.

This is another reason, besides the material implausibility, that I do not think the original Epicurean description of the gods is compatible with where Philodemus has taken it.

That's an interesting idea... I'm not comfortable arguing a position I disagree with, because I know that at least for me, word choice and tone are influenced by feelings, and to feign feeling for a position I don't like would feel dishonest. I don't enjoy dishonesty and I'm not good at it either, lol.

So someone else may want to do that.

Another option that could have a similar underlying goal would be steel manning-- for members to explain the strongest parts of an opposing argument to the satisfaction of the opponent, in their own words but without pretending to endorse it. Which accomplishes the goal of everyone being sure they know what they are opposing.

JJ, I want to be clear on what I mean about the death penalty issue. I think DeWitt explains that there were no tests of faith for these rituals, just a duty to participate. I'm not saying he lied about anything-- I was just referring specifically to attending the rituals. I think it was brought up as evidence of him having personal religious practices, and I was saying well, that may not be evidence of a religious practice the way we would think of it-- hard to know. I'm an atheist and have attended rituals-- I've been to churches. I don't consider that dishonest!

Susan, I can see how that would feel sad... as a "cradle atheist", my sense of awe never got connected to anything I had to let go of. For me, it's more the awe of existence, that we and the universe are here at all-- it's breathtaking. I hope you can connect to that particular pleasure in a new way. That loss is one of the things I find tragic about religion.