[Cont.]While society recommends that religious faith be respected and tolerated,

while I find the Golden Rule to be a useful guide in conjunction, I have no

serious difficulties in living my life accordingly. My milieu, at 82 years of age, is

filled with strands of joy and depression, of beauty and ugliness, of the

transcendental and the profane, of love and indifference, of courage and

cowardice, of intellectual rejoicing and wilful ignorance. Navigating life,

for me, has been an incredible adventure and I find it positively uplifting to

know that the Universe gave birth to me and to that Universe I will return when I

die. As far as I can discover, as with every particle in the Universe, the particles

that currently comprise me are eternal. Personal identity is an ephemeral

phenomenon that some value above all else. In society, we are what others

perceive us to be and AFAIAC there is not a whole heap of other stuff that

defines who we are. I live for the life I have with urgency and verve and a

conviction that it is the only time in our Universe that there will be something

that is me. I find it intensely ennobling to realise that I am here now and that I

will have been here and that the identity defining Warren Glover was a part of

such a remarkable agglommeration as our Universe. That identity will cease to

exist but the particles that gave me form are eternal. It is similarly ennobling to

know that I am and have been related to every other life-form that has ever

existed on this remarkable incubator and ark named Earth

It had never been my intention to reveal so much of who I am. But I realised that in order to confound and condemn the mean mind that draws upon religious faith for the temerity to brand my milieu as a charnel house, it might be the best way to destroy the impression he might impart to less experienced and less practised skeptics, enquirers and atheists. [Cont.]

[Cont.] Nota Bene: "Human beings are counted as being entirely in the world and of the world."

This is the state of play. This is the highest station to which humans can legitimately aspire to, because there is nothing beyond that. To importune a deity further is to journey into La La Land [Disneyland for the pitifull]. Many humans find alleviation from loneliness and insecurity in an indifferent Universe through the company of an invisible friend. This yearning is found in most paragraphs of this Sellick narrative.

Sellick asks: "Why then, the Lord's prayer? Was this a failure of courage? Do we think that if we went all the way in rejecting all religious language that we would finally find ourselves alone and desperate in a cruel world?"

Or do the atheists demonstrate courtesy toward the theists among them at the funeral? You're so like the average christian, so average, so mediocre, so robotic and devoid of charity toward fellow humans.

And further: "We have lost the ability to speak into the face of death."

This is word soup, a verbal mixed salad of the "sure and certain hope" variety, designed for obliquity rather than enlightenment.

And lastly: ".......the Word has been set loose on the earth and disbelief on a massive scale will not alter that."

If you would capitalise "the Word" could not respect the Ark that gave you life and sustained you in this hostile Universe and capitalise the name that humankind has chosen for it?......" set loose on Earth" is simply acknowledging an obligation to our planet and gratitude to the courage and persistence of our ancestors.

"Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." - Carl Sagan.

A noble utterance announcing humankind's presence and its intention to persist.
Lachrymose pleadings directed at an imaginary friend for guidance demeans us and declares our unworthiness of the benefits we have inherited and of our potential that is awaiting discovery.