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A hateful God and a meaningless cosmos turned out to be an error in perceiving reality. It didn't fit observation and experimentation.

Okay, what is a meaningful cosmos?

I know none of this is provable, nor is it possible to transmit it through description or some magic mind meld. But it's reality to me and it is how the world works. IMHO of course. YMMV.

I have no doubt about it being your reality. It's just not necessarily the reality for others who may be less fortunate, perhaps a mother in Darfur whose babies just got hacked to death in front of her, and who may not have any food for her remaining child, who doesn't know if that child will live another day, who has no access to medical care, or who has been raped repeatedly by marauding gangs of soldiers.

We choose what we want to see or don't want to see. It may be irrelevant if it is snowing and the temperature is hitting 20 below if we sit in our warm home, snug and grateful to a compassionate God. We can ignore the world, and even find "beauty" in the snow outside, and never think for a moment if there is someone shivering under a bridge with nothing to eat and nowhere safe to sleep.

I have no doubt about it being your reality. It's just not necessarily the reality for others who may be less fortunate, perhaps a mother in Darfur whose babies just got hacked to death in front of her, and who may not have any food for her remaining child, who doesn't know if that child will live another day, who has no access to medical care, or who has been raped repeatedly by marauding gangs of soldiers.

THAT'S FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT.

Remember the Marxist claim that "Religion is the opiate of the masses" ?

(E.g. Christianity is only believed as an self-induced ameliorative to suffering).

Now you're saying the suffering makes it impossible to believe Christianity.

And then of course, you have St. Paul's remark that "if for this life only we have believed in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied" or the admonitions in Hebrews 11 about those of old who had faith who never experienced the promised good; or Augustine meditating on the sack of Rome; or the worldwide symbol of Christianity being a man from a working-class ethnic minority in a military-occupied country being tortured to death following His conviction by an illegal kangaroo court.

SURE Christianity is only an armchair game for the comfortable.

Hack cough *spit*.

And for contemporary refernces, I think it was QUIX who talked about dealing with an alcoholic who left his child to suffer frostbite in a car in 12-degree weather while the alcoholic got drunk...and the other alcoholic who repented.

Cheers! Nice try.