[Serious] Over the top

[Belacqua]

OK, not christian. Taking into consideration all your defense of religion and religious thought, what are you? Generic theist? You indicated that you teach/have students, what do you teach? 

Considering your behavior I think not telling Shell and the rest of us what you consider yourself is disingenuous.

The definition that this forum demands is that an atheist is anyone who lacks a belief in God. 

I lack a belief in God. I am not a theist, generic or brand-name.

Will that be considered sufficient for my trial? 

My background is in art. To understand Western art, you have to understand Western religion. For example, no one can understand Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel if he doesn't understand the Neoplatonic Christianity of Ficino, etc., that Michelangelo believed. For centuries, aesthetic thought was embedded in and inseparable from religion. 

Have you heard of van Eyck, and the other Flemish Primitives? There's a wonderful painting of the Annunciation by Robert Campin in the New York museum called the Cloisters. When I worked at the cash register there during my grad school days, I could lean over from the counter and see it, which I did a lot. To understand this painting, you need to know about the religious movement of the time called devotio moderna, which has links with great Christian thinkers like Nicholas of Cusa, and with the Byzantine traditions of using icons as meditational aids. The whole thing is beautiful, wise, and good to know.

Even where things are not explicitly religious, their place of birth makes them inseparable from the cultural background. Proust, for example, is unthinkable in a non-Protestant country. The Tale of Genji, which is entirely about sleeping around, could only be written in a Buddhist world. 

One of the problems with many modern New Atheist types is that they don't understand religion very well. I've seen ridiculous statements about truly great thinkers, made by people who have never read a single book about them. 

So, your honor, in my defense, I conclude that there is enormous beauty and wisdom in religious tradition, that I am greedy to get as much of it as possible, and that people who dismiss it are, very often, just ignorant. 

I am not going to tell you about my classes, because they are unusual and could easily be Googled. I am not affiliated with official academia. My book about how an artist's theology determines his means of expression was much praised by poets, and much ignored by professors. This pleased me. 

Again, the only thing that all atheists have in common is that they lack a certain belief. I have learned from this and similar forums that this is often forgotten, and that an atheist like me is judged to be disingenuous. Which I am used to, and don't care about.