GOP hate speech continues ban on atheist chaplains in military

[JoeTheJuggler]

So in other words if the pope was secretly an atheist it would be wrong to say the pope was catholic? Hell I have seen a catholic Monsignor define god as the mystery in the universe, that is at least deist and a very heretical view for a catholic. So was he christian or not?

Yep. I earlier pointed out that contemplatives in many very different religions probably have more in common with one another--and are more similar to atheist or humanists who follow some sort of contemplative or meditation practice-- than their more mainstream theistic counterparts, yet they are still considered members of their religion.

I already mentioned the Trappist monk who thinks it's important to coompletely discard any concept of god he has accumulated every couple of years. As a kid in the Catholic Church, I remember when Fr. de Mello was in vogue. He freely used the word "God" but he wasn't talking about anything remotely like conventional usages of the term. (In fact, Ratzinger expressed theological concerns over de Mello's teachings.)

And when you get down to it--does it mean anything different to say "god is utterly ineffable" and "I'm not a theist"?

I like to point out that if you think god is omnipresent, then is there any difference between saying you believe the universe exists and you believe god exists? (Of course there's always the logical problem of god the creator and omnipresence. Surely separating the subject and object of this act causes a logical problem. Did God create himself? If so, then it implies God had a beginning and isn't eternal. If not, is the created universe not-God? If the universe or even parts of it is not-God, how is the doctrine of omnipresence reconciled?)