The admission that I am not God is the acceptance of being a subject; a finite individual with particular features and a limited perspective, or to put it in positive terms; the acceptance of subjectivity is the admission that I am not God. However, subjectivity is born in a web of intense relationships so the experience of subjectivity should not lead us to think that we are separate entities. We are connected to one another, we exist in multiplicity; folded together in various constellations in each moment of becoming.

As Christians we confess to be one in Christ – who is in the Father and whom the Father is in. We accept that we are folded together within the divine, and thus that individuality cannot be thought of as separateness. I am therefore always with you and without you I am not. Still, I am not One with God since that would mean that you are not.

To assume Oneness with God is simply idolatry and the consequence is oppression towards the Other. To assume that God is not creates the same boundary markers since subjectivity is then understood as separateness from the Other; the ones who believe to be One with God. It is therefore not surprising that some atheists might say that religion poisons everything, since religion is believed to belong to the poisonous Other.

The rejection of the Other is a unifying force, its sacrificial mechanism binds people together, and can therefore be said to be a kind of religious practice. But it is anti-religion; it unifies people by the exclusion of the Other. Religious fundamentalists and ‘anti-theists’ therefore need one another since their separate unities are built on the common foundation of this exclusionary practice.