Hi Sriram,
A response to your Message 16:
IMO many of the atheists (New and Old...what's the difference?) are not just repetitive bores but they also lack vision and insight. Intelligent perhaps but no wisdom. Sorry guys...no offence... 
And no offence taken, just complete disagreement.
Britain in particular, being one of the pioneers in Science and modern thinking...seems to have gotten stuck in its own success and glory. Science is the new 'religion'.
For me science isn't a religion in any way. It is simply a method for arriving at better explanations for the things that are conducive to its applications. I would argue that it continually seeks to improve on those successes and its approach is one of critical judgement, inquisitiveness and a willingness to challenge and change if evidence demands.
Britishers seem to be resting on their laurels and wallowing in their atheism as though it is some sort of a path breaking new find that no one has thought of before.
You also seem to relate atheism to science here, which seems to me to be a very suspect approach. Also, no one that I know thinks that an atheistic point of view is anything new at all, so this idea that it is some sort of new path falls upon deaf ears as far as I am concerned.
This is a pity because atheism is as old as the hills
Of course it is. Why there is even a tradition of atheism going back at least 2000 years in India. Do you really think that atheists think that they have discovered something new? Sounds like some sort of a straw man to me.
but lacks any true insight or comprehensive perspective. It lacks integration and a big picture view.
On the contrary, I think many insights can be gleaned from atheism, and as for comprehensiveness, my feeling is that most religions are not particularly comprehensive at all. They become little more than ideologies, spouting their various 'truths' whilst denying the 'truths' of others.
Most recent atheists are looking out of a window that someone like Dawkins or Harris have shown them and believe that the little window gives them access to all the world, beyond which there cannot possibly be anything else.
Certainly not my position. I was an atheist long before Dawkins etc. came along, and I have never held the position that there couldn't possibly be anything else. I'm not sure exactly who you are speaking to here. Perhaps, yourself?
I guess it will change in the coming decades.
You mean you hope that it will change in the coming decades. Present trends seem to suggest that you could well be wrong. most people in the UK have become apathetic about religion, confining it to a position of steadily deceasing importance.
I suspect you don't really understand what atheism entails at all, simply prefering to try to pigeonhole people into your selfmade boxes. You often talk about your approach to the spiritual, and are very ready to condemn those who disagree with you, dismissing them as those who haven't yet understood the important messages that you are trying to convey. Perhaps if you did try, yourself, to understand what other people are saying, even if you disagree with them, then you may find that your big picture is more comprehensive and integrated.
