So back on March 17 (if my archives weren't screwy, I'd use the permalink, but, alas . . .) I tried to explain my thoughts on nature and magic and atheism. I didn't do a very good job. What I meant to say was something like this:

A man truly awake does not need religion. He doesn’t need gods. He doesn’t need miracles. He doesn’t need holy lands here below or celestial heavens up above. For him, life in this universe is itself holy, as is every patch of ground and every path he walks. Life itself is enough of a miracle. To believe in a god who made this life is to believe in a miracle even greater than this miracle. Who needs more than one unfathomable miracle? Existence is a fluke, a freak, a wonder, a dream, a bizarre uncanny thing. Our own consciousness of this existence is so incredible a phenomenon that I don’t understand why anyone feels the need to believe in anything else more 'spiritual.' It’s all spiritual. It’s all true magic. Why add imagined magic to explain the magic that is right before us?

You have to ignore the old-fashioned "he" standing in for both sexes (grrr). That's a quote from a very good (and at times very frightening) article by Ed Weathers. Makes you think. (And I stole the link from Pen-Elayne on the Web.)