Thanks to marla for pointing this post out to me. It aligns perfectly with my musings about life's lack of absolutes, and the many religious-person's unfortunate expectation/need for them in order to find truth.
Here are the parts that caught my attention:
Those who refuse to leave the world of absolutes, black & white, either/or:
and in contrast, those who will:
What is remarkable about the fundamentalist perspective, however, is an unwillingness to see spiritual life in the same light [the natural world: "built in simultaneously subtle and complicated ways"]. Instead of seeing subtlety and complication that require a lifetime of intense dedicated effort — a genuine personal investigation of the world — to understand, everything is reduced to magic-marker outlines with unwavering, absolute answers.
This world stands in stark contrast to the fundamentalist's spiritual world, a domain so sparse, so simple, that it's been bled of all color, shading and texture.
What struck an atheist like me about these folks [spiritually-oriented people] was their dedication to the investigation.
What mattered most to the people I'm thinking of was not doctrine or dogma. It was their exploration of their own experience. They were searching through their lived experience of their spiritual traditions for an understanding of what was sacred in their lives. I found that dedication refreshing and exciting. They understood that there were no easy answers in life.
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