Religious Freedom

[Prudence]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

I'm certainly not looking to be converted or convince anybody else of my views. I'm just curious of a process so completely foreign to me since the gods forgot to give me the faith gene. But I can live with curiosity unfulfilled.

It's difficult to reconcile a claim of mere curiosity when also presented with statements like this:

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

Since the only evidence we have of Jesus's message are the people who tried to speak for him (no direct authorship exists) how do you have any idea what his message was independent of them? Maybe it is like deciding that Jeffrey Dahmer was a pretty good guy based on the writings of his mother?

I'm having a hard time seeing that as anything other than a dig.

I can't speak for Wendybeth, but the reason I don't usually participate in these discussions is that, for the most part, the "other side" does NOT have a genuine curiosity to know how I think, except as a pretext for "demonstrating" how wrong I must be. Because the "other side" sees my beliefs as silly and fundamentally untrue, they are genuinely unable to prevent themselves from, in their minds, proving me wrong. The questions aren't so much "why do you believe that?" as they are "how can you believe that in the face of all this evidence I've decided proves your God doesn't exist?"

It's nearly, if not completely, impossible to have a reasonable discussion in such an environment. If I respond with any visible emotion whatsoever, it's proof that I've let emotion, and not reason, guide my judgment. If I stop participating, it's conceeding the point. I can't produce God out of my sock drawer or give his address in Jersey as proof. And what I can provide that I consider proof, others consider mere coincidence, which gets no one anywhere. And thus the argument goes 'round and the horse begs to be made glue already.