The very second I begin to ascribe arrogance to another way of looking at things in a comparison with my own, the mantle of arrogance rests on my own shoulders.

One can recognize arrogance on its own, compared to the other standards of the practicioner. That's an entirely different thing, as is the discussion of error, fact, and the unknown.

When I was 19 I was doing some research for a course in Japanese history. It was my habit to examine a nation's literature and art in history courses and to examine its history for literature courses, as I found that those disciplines tend to shed light on each other and help the student to understand the people she studies in the context of their own time and aesthetic. I had stumbled across Japanese mythology, its connection to imperial godhead, and the amazing beauty of Japanese artistic renditions of their myths. During my search I encountered a book called The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell. I eventually read all four of the books Campbell wrote in that series, and it changed my opinion of religion in a (dare I use the word?) fundamental way.

That opinion is this: People accept what they're ready to accept. They also need a context for their experiences. I believe that the religious symbolism of the great religions speaks to emotional and unconscious needs that human beings have which are unmet by other means, which is why the symbolism endures. I believe that any atheist or agnostic who has gone beyond the "oh, hogwash!" stage of reaction against religion will attempt to meet those emotional and unconscious needs using many of the same types of symbols, manipulated in ways that don't require a Supreme Being. I believe that there is a transcendent sense in human beings owing to our understanding of mortality that wishes to find meaning, and therefore will, even if it means we will seat ourselves in a large armchair on the porch of a house of cards.

Just a little while ago, you said something like this: we, and perhaps others, are the self-awareness of the universe. This is an opinion with which I agree, when I think of the universe as a large organism, and all of us as little neurons, as Lewis Thomas described a group of ants circling a crumb as neurons about to have an idea. This is every bit as much an arrogant position to take as the one held by religious literalists in the monotheistic religions, that God created Man in His Image, because the latter makes us God's agents on Earth, and the former makes us the Smartest Ones. Yet I don't find that either of these opinions bothers me much as an expression of arrogance, because we Smartest Ones are also puny and limited, in the context of the concept that supports our status, and the people created in His Image are also, in their own context, inferior to their Creator.

Yet each "side" sees the other as arrogant, because each side understands that the other's position threatens their own position in one way or another. That's fear, and that fear is what drives religious conflict.

Where the line is drawn for me is not the level of philosophical sophistication or of aesthetic achievement of any belief system, religious or otherwise, but what we use it to support in our relationships with other people and with our world. The true arrogance arises when we use our beliefs to beat up others who live in a different house on Card Street. That can happen to anyone.

Hearts over clubs, and spades over diamonds. That's all that matters to me anymore.

But of course, this too is only an opinion of a person who enjoys the view from the fence.