An Open Letter to the "Non-Believers" Who Aren't Really Non-Believers (in-case you didn't catch that with the quotation marks).

Dear Athiests:

You have no idea, or perhaps thousands of ideas, like me, about that thing we disagree on.
Or do we disagree with each other or within or about or because of it?
I often admire your faith, a faith rather silly and easy at times and other times drastically complex and profound. As consumed as we are in the same question with divergent answers, our processes of thought mirror one another. While the middle ground folks, namely moderate agnostics, claim their neutrality, we carry the books and banners of belief. Funny though, you assert what G*d is and choose not to believe, while we assert what G*d is not and choose to believe. Yours is the more rational choice of course: to create G*d in the image of all you know and to know it's bullshit (read: not worship worthy). I wish I was more capable, as you are, of knowing when I'm standing in mystery and when I'm standing in idolatry of the imagination. Unfortunately the difference is not always clear to me and further, I am not sure my brain is all there is (which is also the beef I have with religious fundamentalists who claim to know what G*d is by placing all faith in their ability to fully grasp mediated revelation).
What I have learned in the last two years is that some people need the idea of G*d just to survive. Though you softly critique this survival mechanism as 'weak' or 'crutch-like,' I beg to differ. A distinction must be drawn somewhere between religious belief as that which helps us keep keepin on and that which stifles our ability to engage critically with the realities of our lives in community on this planet. Simple stupid answers to serious suffering, phrases like "god has a plan" or "he never gives you something you cannot handle" are bad theology. In these cases we have the very god you reference and astutely cast out of consideration. I join the iconoclastic activity you take up in the face of this theological insufficiency. However, when someone (or some group) is facing horrific life circumstances and finds an outlet for their pain in prayer, song and communal ritual whereby they feel the strength necessary to keep breathing, iconoclastic activity strikes me inhumane and cruel. Further, don't we all have our 'thing' we need just to get by? Many of you critiquing the G*d of religion are quite content bowing down to the survival potential in substances of the temporary mind-numbing nature. So let's be honest: it's not so much who we make G*d out to be, or who G*d really is, but what we do (or don't do) to and with others with/out of these beliefs systems. If you want to be an athiest, fine by me. Just follow in the footsteps of Wade Meyer if that's the case because he's got it right.

Feel me?
Ejoye