Evening.

While lurking around these boards I've found it mentioned in a few places that a lot, or even a majority, of the members here are atheist or agnostic. I myself identify as an atheist and was wondering what my fellow atheist LDers (or Christians/other believers as well, doesn't matter) think about the relationship between their interest in lucid dreaming and their religious/spiritual standing.

Maybe I'll start to give you an idea of my thoughts.

Personally I think my interest in lucid dreaming and subsequent discovery that it is perfectly real and unimaginably vivid as well as my particular experiences in that realm have only served to reinforce my position as an atheist. The more I study about the brain the more it makes perfect sense to me that such notions of the soul and the spirit, and perhaps god or gods have evolved over time out of what otherwise appear akin to walking hallucinations, given that these things had no way of being explained many thousands of years ago. Recent study however, and my own experiences and conjecture into the nature of the experience as well as the apparatus underlying it seem only further proof that we are materialistic beings in a materialistic universe and that this most sophisticated simulation chamber I house in my skull will cease to be upon my death just like anything else. That certainly doesn't make it any less amazing however, and it certainly doesn't have to be sad.

Thoughts?