Bad things happen to good people

God is spirit.

And spirit generally means not physical in the sense of not a being whose existence is based on the measurable laws of nature… and thus we say supernatural rather than natural. But this is not the same as magical any more than other universes believed to exist by many scientists are magical. It is just an existence apart from the space-time mathematical structure of our universe. That doesn’t make it magical. It doesn’t mean there is no rationality of causation to its existence. Though I do think the materialistic reductionist view of even our universe is wrong. The universe does not exist because of the material property of components, rather its components have its existence and properties because of the space-time structure which it is a part of. So when we say that God does not derive its existence from material components that doesn’t make Him magical any more than the universe He created.

You can choose to believe there is no other existence than this mathematical structure of space-time which all evidence tells us came into existence 13.8 billion years ago. Or you can choose to believe that there is no other existence than this and other mathematical such structures which can be manipulated by the natural laws of their structure. But likewise I can choose for my own reasons to believe in an existence different from these which I call spiritual and that does not make it magical.

Atheism is not a religion. It is a classification of various beliefs regarding a religious question. But yes as Mark observes it can be made into a kind of religion. The same goes (and frankly even more so) for science. Science is not a religion. But it is strangely treated like a religion by some people as if it requires some kind of life devotion. This is what is usually behind this absurd irrational notion by different sorts of fundies that theists cannot be scientists. Science is an activity which people from all religions and cultures can and have participated in precisely because belief is irrelevant in the work of science. It is a procedural activity devised to filter out subjectivity and belief to find out truths about the measurable world around us. It is procedural in the sense of being based on procedural ideals of honesty and objectivity, where 1) you test hypothesis and 2) you use written procedures anyone can follow to get the same result no matter what you want or believe.

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