[Maryjane]

atheist = lost (forgiven, but spiritually dead)

Ah yes, the poor lost atheist.(or anyone else that doesn't believe in your god) They have no sense of direction. They are misguided. They won't get the golden opportunity to worship god for all eternity after their death. Forever separated from god's love. They get to swim in that lake of fire instead. Yet...they are forgiven!
Gotcha...Like I said...heard it a million times. Not afraid since I've already been to hell and back.


You do know that people can be spiritual without being religious? Your religion doesn't have the choke hold on spirituality.

Authentic spirituality involves an emotional response, what I will call the spiritual response, which can include feelings of significance, unity, awe, joy, acceptance, and consolation. Such feelings are intrinsically rewarding and so are sought out in their own right, but they also help us in dealing with difficult situations involving death, loss, and disappointment. The spiritual response thus helps meet our affective needs for both celebration and reconciliation. As Richard Dawkins puts it in his book Unweaving the Rainbow, we have an "appetite for wonder," an appetite for evoking the positive emotional states that are linked to our deepest existential questions. But what might evoke these states? Spirituality often involves a cognitive context, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world which can both inspire the spiritual response and provide an interpretation of it. Our ideas about what ultimately exists, who we fundamentally are, and our place in the greater scheme of things form the cognitive context for spirituality. By contemplating such beliefs we are temporarily drawn out of the mundane into the realization of life’s deeper significance, and this realization generates emotional effects. But equally, the spiritual response thus generated is itself interpreted in the light of our basic beliefs; namely, it is taken to reflect the ultimate truth of our situation as we conceive it. The cognitive context of spirituality and the spiritual response are therefore linked tightly in reciprocal evocation and validation. A third essential component of spirituality is what is ordinarily called spiritual practice. Since the intellectual appreciation of fundamental beliefs alone may not suffice to evoke a particularly deep experience, various non-cognitive techniques can help to access the spiritual response. Activities such as dance, singing, chant, meditation, and participation in various rituals and ceremonies all can play a role in moving us from the head to the heart. And it is in the heart, or gut, after all, where we find the most powerful intrinsic rewards of spirituality, as profound as its cognitive context might be.

Spirituality without Faith

PS: it doesn't do maryjane to discuss Satan if she/he? dosen't believe Satan exists .. does it ???

PS...It doesn't do what? Maryjane will debate any topic she chooses, even ones she does not believe in. (like newborns being forgiven for sins) The only one that controls Maryjane...is Maryjane. Gotta love free will.