What do you have to loose?

@fmf said
You asked me this question - in essence - in 2016, 2017 and 2018, repeatedly, and at first, I answered it a few times ~ and even divulged quite personal information in doing so ~ but you ignored the answers, and just repeated the question, and my answers got shorter, and in the end, I stopped answering and told you, instead, that my answer had not changed since when we'd talked about it before. This is my response to you now, as well.

Actually if I recall correctly the first time I asked you this question you claimed that if I went back and read the tens of thousands of posts you have posted before I might find an answer to my question there. It seems you are playing the same evasion games now that you did then. Oh well I guess that does answer my question unequivocally.

@dj2becker said
Actually if I recall correctly the first time I asked you this question you claimed that if I went back and read the tens of thousands of posts you have posted before I might find an answer to my question there. It seems you are playing the same evasion games now that you did then. Oh well I guess that does answer my question unequivocally.

Call it how you see it.

@fmf said
Call it how you see it.

Classic. Pure gold.

@sonship said
If you don't mind at all repeating essentially this concept many times since 2016, why does it irk you to have to repeat anything else?

I post as I see fit. I reveal what I want to. I repeat myself whenever I choose to. I refer people back to previous discussions when that seems appropriate. Isn't that how it works for us all on a message board like this? Don't you do the same thing?

@sonship said
And those Christians from your past that you said you quite admired, have you told them also that their "god figure" is entirely fallacious and imaginary?

I am not in touch with all the Christians I've admired over the last 40 years.

Aside from them, the Christians that I live and work among nowadays - including those I admire - know that I have lost my faith and, in some cases, this fact, and the process that led to it, have been pored over in detail and at length.

Those Christians also know that I believe faith in God gives billions of people meaning and purpose in life; it gives them structure; it gives them pointers for their moral compasses; it more often than not gives them a sense of community and belonging.

Indeed, I benefit in many ways from all those effects that faith has upon people I know.

When I interact with Christians - or people of other faiths - in some arena or venue or context that is the equivalent of this forum in terms of purpose and opportunity, I speak about my beliefs in the same way as I speak about them here.

I have never once said to you that your God figure is "entirely fallacious", so that is not language that I use with people I meet.

Nor do I describe anyone's beliefs as "animal excrement" or "germs" or "disease" being spread by "unclean dogs" or "pigs".

Perhaps that's the kind of language you would use if you visited Indonesia and got talking to people with different beliefs from you.

I never pretend or claim that my beliefs with regard to religion and supernatural matters are anything other than my personal, subjective perspectives about the reality in which we live.

The notion that other people's objects of faith are "imaginary" is not particularly controversial here when you bear in mind that this society is stitched together with a range of mutually 'contradictory' religious traditions.