About the Author: John Udell
John Udell (Jack) has been a member of UUF of La Crosse for over ten years. Though raised in a liberal Christian tradition, he came to UUism later in life, discovering that he, like many, actually had been a UU is whole life – though just didn’t know it.
As a member of this Fellowship he feels he has been inspired, nurtured, and empowered. After listening deeply with trust, respect, and compassion he wishes to share a few insights that he feels may contribute to our fellowship’s collective conversation about the importance of being intellectually honest and about how we make sense of the world.
...though linguistically, “being” an a-theist (atheist) should be the same thing as not being a theist, this clearly is not always the case. Indeed, even the renowned Unitarian Humanist John H. Dietrich made this very claim: that is, that because he considered himself open minded about the possibility of there being a god he was not an atheist. Though because he saw no evidence for a god, he was not a theist. Dietrich falls victim to the mental contortion of equating denial of existence with proof of non-existence, what he felt was the definition of atheist.