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To: mairdie
I beg to differ. I refuse to debate religion because I fear convincing someone to whom religion is a needed foundation. I have no fear of being an intellectual inferior to someone of religious beliefs, but I respect their rights to have those beliefs and expect them to respect my right not to. If they can’t respect another human being of differing beliefs, I feel sorry for them. But superior? Absurd.

Well, atheist "brites" do tend to see themselves as being intellectual inferior (which many are) but wiser and essentially omniscient also, judging God with their railing screeds for the suffering in the world and for not stopping such (as well as for His actions when He decisively judged those who caused evil) as if they knew the effect such suffering would have in the long term and God did not, and could not and would not make it all work together for the good of the those who love God and thus the Good.

However, intellectually speaking, what you are doing is presenting respect for others with different beliefs and their right to hold them as being contrary to debating the merits for such, so that the latter must exclude the former, which either-or stance is a false dichotomy.

Respecting others with different beliefs and their right to hold them is not necessarily opposed to debating the merits for them, from their choice of fonts to the origin of energy.

72 posted on 09/24/2017 3:04:46 AM PDT by daniel1212 (rust the risen Lord Jesus to save you as a damned and destitute sinner + be baptized + folllow Him)
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To: daniel1212

When I was in high school, I screwed up a fundamental astronomy fact. I then went into a science fair and won, after convincing every judge that they were wrong and I was right. When I realized what I had done, I was devastated, though it was a simple intellectual issue. And I swore that day that I would never argue with someone on religion, as I had frequently done in high school, because I care far too deeply about the people I meet to damage them, as I believed I could potentially do. That’s my side of it.

On the other, I am often amazed at the arrogance of people who have only one right and that is theirs. I am horrified by Muslims who take that to unbelievable extremes, and I am not that impressed with Christians who do something similar intellectually, if not physically. I am not anti-Christian. I’m socially Catholic, if intellectually atheist, and spend hours defending Christians to my friend, who has had bad experiences with greedy ministers going after her dying, well-to-do parent. But I defend the rights of Christians to have their own beliefs. I don’t defend their beliefs.


76 posted on 09/24/2017 4:28:50 AM PDT by mairdie
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