I believe in God. Her name is Mother Nature. She is ruthless and random and She always wins in the end.

When asked to swear on the bible, I respond that I would even swear on Darwin's "Origin of Species".

She does a fairly sloppy job of creating life forms through natural selection. I was at an aquarium once, viewing the weirdest little flat fish that had two eyes on one side of it's head. An evangelical Christian happened to be standing next to me and exclaimed "Oh, only God could create that!" I said, "No, as an intelligent designer, He would have done a much better job. that could only be the work of natural selection."

I know She is very fond of arthropods such as beetles and ants because these are the most numerous of all species on earth.

I enjoy observing Her. I respect Her creations,  even the ones that the Mormon God says should not exist, such as homosexuals.

I respect the fact that She made me as an introvert and feel no need to "improve" on Her "design".

I enjoy observing Her and find awe and wonder in Her glory.  I realize that verbal petitions to Her will not change the weather, or other phenomena.

I know that the best way I can begin to understand Her and maybe even controlHher is through a way of thinking called the scientific method.

I am an atheist when it comes to the Gods of religion. But, I do very much believe in Mother Nature.

I do too.

So clever.

Isn't it easier to believe in Santa Claus than to believe in the elderly Sky Dad of the Old Testament with long white hair, a flowing white beard, a beautiful white robe, an expensive pair of Birkenstocks, and an impressive laundry list of serious mental health disorders, such as runaway jealously, mega anger management issues and megalomaniacal narcisstistic grandiosity disorder, to name just a few?

Instead of that, and instead of only The Visible Nature, contemplate the unseen Presence of a limitless Sea of Consciousness that floats everything that exists, both physical and non-physical. An unseen subtrate of ineffable depth and unlimited power that underpins all that is and connects everything and everyone together, rendering our perceptions of separateness as pure illusion. What if Creation is still ongoing in every emergent moment, and everything that appears in time does so as a physical manifestation of its inherent, natural essence unfolding?

Then maybe carefully reuse/redeploy the word "God" as a tentative label for all of that?

Then envision a fish swimming around confidently proclaiming to the other fishies in the school, "I've given this a lot of thought, and I've decided I don't believe in water. It doesn't exist. I'm sure of it."

A lame metaphor, to be sure, but intended to provoke the potential thought that there might be something unseen that is the very substrate of not only life, but of all that is. Something that is not only in our face unobserved, but inside the space within each cell of our bodies and between the subparticles of every atom and molecule of the visible universe, and its invisible counterparts, and the core fabric of space itself.

What if people spent more of their life energy chipping away at our illusion of separateness with the hope of eventually catching a glimpse of whatever that power is that formed the stars and our Sun and causes it to shine just right to keep us warm but not charbroiled, and cool but not frozen solid and everything else in that precarious, life-supporting balance.

Is there some unseen force that allows human beings to be born on this planet and mostly grow to old age without a fatal accident or illness, and allows nations to coexist without blowing each other up and destroying life on the planet (so far)? All so we can each one be the Star in our very own Reality Show Soap Opera and get so caught up in the story that we convince ourselves it is Absolutely Real . . . so real, that is, until the ending credits of our exciting and absorbing entertainment are carved on our headstone.

What if the most powerful place you can put yourself is into a state of deep Humility, where you intentionally take everything you think you know about anything and put it all into a little box and gently close the lid for safekeeping. Then you silence your chatterbox thoughts and focus intently into the deep recesses of your inner awareness - that place of living consciousness from which you sense and interpret the thoughts that spring up in your mind - the consciousness that listens to the unspoken words the thoughts generate - the awareness that senses and recognizes the emotions that energize your body. Peer intently and deeply within into what appears at first to be nothing at all. Then maybe one day you very subtly sense some kind of tiny, glimmer of something seeming to coalesce into a dimensionless dot of invisible energy that slowly stirs a little stronger and commands your attention as something you begin to feel, but cannot see, and over time grows slowly stronger until it reaches a critical mass and begins to trigger a physical overflowing of energy manifesting physically through your tear glands. You have no idea what it is. You cannot describe it with any words at your command, but you can physically feel the tears running down your face, so you know something is happening, but have no idea what it is or where it comes from. But you accept it without judgment and just feel glad that you are feeling something that commands your attention and awareness like nothing you have ever experienced previously. You try to describe it while typing on an internet blog but realize that the words spewing out of your fingers seem to insult the depth and quality of what you are feeling as you type, but you do the best you can and realize that that is all you can do in an attempt to share something that cannot be described using mere language. And then, realizing that nearly everyone who happens to read your bizarre typing will consider you to be simply nuts - crazy - insane - over the edge . . . But you accept that with a loving smile and let it be OK. And who knows ... there might be lots of people who don't think you are crazy who have passed this way before you arrived here. But even if you are the only blogger who appreciates what you know you felt and what your lame typing attempted to express with clumps of tiny pixels on a computer display ... then maybe it was worth the bother. Who knows if there might be even one kindred spirit out there in cyberspace who might feel a small glimmer of resonance with what you tried to say. Maybe that person sensed and felt something similar to what you felt as you typed and maybe moved their awareness a tiny bit closer to that place to which our Great Teachers have been pointing us for millenia. That place where the illusions of separation melt away and the Oneness of All Life is all there is - and ultimately All that Matters.

Thanks for putting those thoughts into writing. I love it! Yes, ..."the oneness of all life"...

The atoms that we are made of were actually forged in exploding super novas. We are literally star dust.