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Robert Anton Wilson spoke a lot on the subject of beliefs and perception.
He often said having a closed mind meant having a closed perception. By closing your mind, you stay in your box and never see anything that doesn't fit in that box, you never venture out of your comfort zone and never perceive anything that doesn't fit according to your beliefs. So Robert would try to go about life not having any beliefs or any belief system in place, which is extremely difficult and he would even admit that not having a belief system, is a belief system in and of itself!
Opening your mind, allows you to perceive more if you also have an open belief system. It might be a bit difficult to not have any belief system in place at all, as Robert found out. So my base core belief is that anything is possible. However, possible doesn't mean probable, certain things in life may be hard to achieve or perceive from where we currently stand in any given moment, as it might not be a card in the deck of hands available to play at that time.
Religion is based on beliefs, so it follows suit that being atheist is kind of like being religious in a way that you don't believe in God, and believe in your own moral judgment. You are still following a belief system, so technically it's similar to having a religion. Agnostic is a nice kind of belief system, in that its almost like a get out of jail free card because you can just say "I'm not sure what I believe" or "I believe there may be a God, but we as humans might not have the intellectual capacity to fully comprehend it". Robert often advised using words like "may" and "might" without referring to the self as "I believe this or that" as it conveys easier without coming across as a definitive answer, making it much more difficult for people to argue against :)
Personally, I am not religious but I am spiritual. The closest theory to what I believe would be pan-spiritualism. I don't think this is a religion per se, and I'm not entirely sure if everything in the theory fits 100% but from what I've read on it so far, it seems to fit what I believe quite nicely.
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