People are frequently fundamentally classified by their beliefs about "God": 1) Those who believe in "God" are classified as Theists. We refer to this as the common God-based philosophical classification system. Unfortunately, the term "God" has at least two extremely different meanings: 1) Generally, (traditional) Theists define "God" as: An entity external to the universe that created and rules the universe 2) Spiritual Atheists reject this definition and, instead, generally accept this one: The personal name given to the infinite and eternal universe (MORE INFO HERE) As radical as the difference between these two definitions of "God" is, the common God-based philosophical classification system makes no distinction whatsoever! WHY IS THIS SUCH A SERIOUS PROBLEM?When making personal judgements, Spiritual Atheists are almost always stuffed into the "Theism Box" by Atheists and the "Atheism Box" by Theists. Due to the inherent limitations of the (previously) common God-based philosophical classification system, this is understandable (and even a bit humorous); but it is not very rational or useful!
Furthermore, when collecting statistics, Spiritual Atheists are almost always classified as Theists (which seriously exaggerates* the number of people who supposedly believe in a literal "God") because the surveyors simply ask, "Do you believe in God?", which naturally elicits a "yes" response from many (not all) Spiritual Atheists. In fact, it is very likely that there are more Spiritual Atheists than there are Theists; yet they are virtually unrecognized!
BUT THE REAL PROBLEM, is that although Spiritual Atheists are very often people who have consciously chosen to dedicate the remainder of their life to the cause of helping to create a better world, they have virtually no collective presence or voice in the world. Because of this significant invisibility, not only are the noble efforts of Spiritual Atheists generally less effective; but they inadvertantly sustain the false "God" of traditional Theism as well as the destructive divisions between literal religions. *For example, on February 16, 2004, on ABC News' PrimeTime (a nationally broadcast television program in the USA), Diane Sawyer reported that 82% of all Americans claim to be Christians (Were other supposed Theists really excluded from this number? Common sense suggests that this is very unlikely.). This particular episode featured an interview with Mel Gibson about his film, The Passion of the Christ. YES, IT'S TIME FOR SPIRITUAL ATHEISTS (YOU) TO STAND UP AND BE COUNTED! [ CONTINUE TO SOLUTION ] What is the cost of INVISIBILITY?MEET OTHER SPIRITUAL ATHEISTSJOIN THE ALLIANCE FOR A BETTER WORLD[SPIRITUAL ATHEISM]
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