neptune,

This is probably slightly tangential, but after leaving a very dogmatic, Christian upbringing, I dabbled in the New Atheist Thing but have since come to realize religion and belief is on a two dimensional axes.

On the first axis, you have dogma, or a core set of beliefs or religious doctrine. High or low dogma. Your classic fundamentalists of any stripe are over here. Evangelical Christians, fundamentalist Islam. And yes even some strains of atheism can be relatively high dogma. On the lower end of the dogma scale you have agnostics, many atheists, some types of new age spirituality, and even some types of organized religion like Unitarianism or Buddhism.

On the second axis is humanism, or the relishing and participation in people, culture and acceptance of people or ideas that do not conform to the doctrine. High on the humanism scale would be literal secular humanists, and other faiths that prioritize people more than dogma.

Eventually, someone raised in a high dogma/low humanism religion might eventually learn there are some faiths that are relatively high humanism, even with a low or relatively high dogma score.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

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