This has been doing the rounds at atheism focused blogs. DiMortuiSunt, despite the title, is not really about atheism, though that is how I identify myself when people ask.
The nice thing about this video is that it shows that atheists aren’t the bogeymen religious leaders want you to think they are. They’re your neighbors and friends and they want the same thing out of life everyone wants: happiness.
Since I gave up religion and church services, I enjoy the quiet streets of Sunday mornings by bike riding to join my dance group. The physicality of my own body is the most trustworthy mediator of truth I know, not some designated authority, and through my senses and my own thinking I choose direct experience of life and its interpretations.
Religion-generated god-ideas attempt to mediate, even colonize, my life experience with symbolic order and community organization, but theism feels like a layer of interference to me, distanced and intellectual, a ‘virtual’ explanation of my personal and community encounters.
For teachers I look to a multitude of creative people, even children, who act artfully at the moment of being touched by the ‘divine’ genius of our expressive nature, a genius that flickers off and on. When I recognize artfully understood moments in others, my own experience is sanctified, enlarged, graced by sharing. Thus elevated I believe I am more fit to consider the ethical choices I face.