I was recently talking to my wife about my attempt to answer metaphysical questions about life and death as an atheist. I was specifically talking about the concept of reincarnation and how it might explain a lot, yet lamenting the fact that I am not a Buddhist, as if to say I couldn’t believe this even if I wanted to. With her usual clarity she simply said, “You can take bits from different religions and incorporate them into your own belief system,” as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, except, at least to me, it wasn’t.
It was one of those “Ah-ha!” moments where I immediately realized she was, of course, right. Mind you, I’m not really sure I want to incorporate specific aspects of different religions into my belief system, but it’s a novel idea, and really, why not? I am so used to rejecting all religious dogma that perhaps I was “throwing the baby out with the bath water.”
This is one of the cool things about the human experience – you have the freedom to figure life out for yourself.