I called a friend who is a believer...

[MTL]

You skipped a step, GC.


Old Baby did NOT make a choice to stop believing in God, per se.

He made a choice to be honest with himself.

...and it was THAT, in turn, which made belief in God impossible.

Twisting words changes nothing, he made choices that led to his nonbelief it's all part of the one and same process. 

GC

I twisted nothing. 

For you to say that he "chose not to believe in God"
when what he actually chose was to be "honest with himself"
means that it is YOU who twists his meaning and thus put words in his mouth.....not I.

My sister does that.

She twists the shit out of words,
and then when I untwist and clarify them,
she accuses me of twisting them.

Classic Cognitive Dissonance.

Such sublime arrogance, GC....to dictate to people what THEY meant to say
but distorting their words slightly...

...and then, diabolically, accusing the person who CLARIFIES the words
as being the one who twisted them.

Sounds to me like something Lucifer would do, to be honest.

Play fair and have some integrity, man.

It's the same type of maddening attempt at manipulation
(and insult to my intelligence...like I'd let you get away with something so pedestrian)
that initially inspired the beginnings of my revolt against religion, in the early days.

In other words,

it is Christians like yourself that drive further afield
the very people you claim to wish to attract.

And although I despise all religion,

I will readily state that not all xtians are like yourself.

I know a few Christians, myself, who would almost certainly find your manoeuvrings quite unsavoury
and would likely agree with me that they are the epitome of everything that xtianity should NOT be.



And another thing:

I am Agnostic; I allow for the possibility that there is a God.

and, if there IS a God,

He will know that all I've ever been is honest about my approach to Him.

If He is actually synonymous with Truth,
then He cannot fault me for that...

....even if it meant questioning whether or not the Bible/Qu'ran/Torah/Whatever is REALLY "His Word"
....or if stupid fallible corrupt control-freak humans just SAID it was His Word.



Many, many times I have thought to myself what a shame it is that there is probably no God,
because if there WAS a God that was synonymous with Truth,

then, ironically,

He would probably LOVE guys like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens (and Old Baby, for that matter)
who used the brain that He gave them,
and endeavored to pursue the real TRUTH of the matter to the best of their ability.

If there really is a God,
I suspect that if it were to turn out that there WILL be one day where we all stand before Him,

it is the Religious of the world that will have a terrible shock coming,
for all the awful shit they've said and done in His name,

...and their sad excuse will be that they CHOSE to follow some stupid book
that other stupid humans told them was "God's Word"

...when in fact it was NEVER anything of the sort.