[quote=“Mucha Man”]"On page 9 of the thread, bob"I think that perhaps it is time to ask “what” religious people think.
Then do so. And listen. [/quote]
I[quote] I don’t care if you dismiss religious experience. But if you claim to want answers then shut up and listen to them without judgment. [/quote]
That is where you go off the rails. Lets be very careful about this. I don’t dismiss the “feelings” that people have when they are having what they call a religious experience. I was pretty clear about that earlier. What I said was that that feeling of communion, that sense of awe at the beauty of things, at the fact of existence etc is absolutly healthy. You can’t seriously imagine that I haven’t had that kind of experience. What I said was that that wonderful and natural thing was linked by association in religion to the notion that anybody KNOWS what god said. That is where it becomes manipulative and that is where you run into serious difficulties.
Telling somebody to shut up and listen is bad enough, but shut up and listen without judgement? You don’t even want me to “think” about it? People make judgements all the time. It is often what thinking is. The judgement that I have come to, and after quite a lot of study and thought, is that religious belief, to the extent that it involves belief in anything supernatural is crazy. It appears crazy. Why wouldn’t I think it was crazy? If there was a more compassionate way to ask that I would use it.
You’ve had your experience with religion, I’ve had mine. They led to different conclusions. My conclusion is antagonistic to yours but it is still an extremely valid conclusion. I would ask that you look into my posts of the last few pages for a better understanding of what those conclusions actually are.
Btw, I still have no idea “what” you believe. Why don’t you tell us? I for one will promise not to engage in any more of what I can admit were pretty rude comments in realation to what you say. I don’t/can’t/won’t promise though not to engage you rationally. You might not want to do this for a number of reasons but at some point the religious community owes it to us. We live with the results of their decsisions. They “owe” us. That is more true of the muslim world obviously.