On 10 Oct, 17:33, "Bill M" <wm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> A straight foreword answer means nothing. Provide me with an answer
based on
> objective verifiable
> facts and I will give it serious consideration.
I very much doubt that, Bill. The fact is, as you and I (and quite
probably most other people here) know, you're not looking for
answers. You're looking for excuses to continue to demand answers.
The "objective, verifiable facts" you constantly talk about are merely
a red herring, when you know - as the intelligent man you surely are -
that religion, faith, belief (call it what you will) has no objective
basis, and *needs none*.
I've lost count of the times that, mistaking your challenges for
genuine questions rather than the rhetorical statements they are,
people have made honest attempts to try to explain these things to
you. And then they realise that you already know their answers - you
just ignore them because it suits you to do so.
But faith in god or gods, or lack thereof, isn't a matter of
'objective proof'. It's a matter of individual perception. Always
has been, always will be. And when it's not treated as such - for
example, when angry atheists try to force people not to believe; or
when angry theists try to force people to believe what they're told -
then that's wrong. This is one of very few freedoms we truly have.
No-one can force us to believe or not believe against our will. They
can force us to act in a certain way, or to speak in a certain way,
but they can't change our perceptions. Only we can do that, and if we
do it we do it in our own time. That's the 'free will' that
Christians talk about, but it's not a Christian thing. We all have
it: Christian, atheist, pagan, and everyone else. And it's not
necessarily a conscious choice, either - although the term 'free will'
implies wrongly that it is. Yours is in your non-belief, and that's
just fine. I don't get to make that decision for you. But you don't
get to make it for anyone else.
So sooner or later, you're going to have to learn to live with the
fact that others are religious, and that they're not answerable to
you. They believe because they have reason to believe. You don't
understand that reason. You never will, unless for some reason you
develop a reason of your own. But that's okay. It's your freedom.
Some people get it wrong, though: they think that because they believe
something - or because they don't - so everyone else must be what they
are, and that's not how it works.
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