My friend - Atheist or Pagan? Myself - Head or Heart Heretic?

I have been thinking about religion the last 2 weeks and even more the last 2 days.

My friend Peter had a great sermon on Polyatheism which is about how he could either be called an atheist or a pagan but pagans are much more fun.

I had a somewhat similar take on the differences between Unitarians and Universalists. Both started with Christianity but Unitarians ultimately rejected most orthodox beliefs due to intellectual problems with standard dogma and Universalists due to more emotional or "fairness" problems.

I ended up siding more with Universalist thought, not because of disagreeing with the Unitarian view, it is right - there are logical problems with orthodox Christianity, but because the Universalist view seemed more of a matter of the heart, which is the true purpose of religion.

So, in my view, Unitarians reject orthodox Christianity based on the mind for logical and fact based reasons: no trinity, no divinity, no virgin birth, no miracles, the wrong and contradictory "facts" in the Bible.

Universalists do not reject "miracles" but reject based on matters of the "heart." They realized that the traditional ideas of heaven and hell violated common sense morality and their understanding of Jesus's life and the lessons he taught.

These both come to the same place in the end - Christian heretics - and it was good and proper that they merged.

Would you rather base your decisions on logic, science and reason or on love, fairness, and optimism? The answer is, of course, both. But who would you rather hang around? I think of universalism as the vine of UU thought more responsible for the love of fun and dance.

But if Universalism is the dancing "heart", you still need to use your Unitarian "head."