(July 10, 2016 at 4:19 am)robvalue Wrote: Yeah. I think ig is right, they're taking it personally. Considering God is just the self, it's not surprising that religious people so often take it personally.
Fair enough, they may think there is hope you will return. But do they think the best way to try and achieve that is to be mean to you, or cut you off? How does that help?
I think in that case, they're more worried about their own accountability through association with you.
As for arguments and evidence, I personally don't care if "Christianity is true". I'm still not interested. Don't give a monkeys. I'm quite happy thinking for myself, and I'm not bowing to anyone, let alone an evil tyrant. So to me, it would be interesting to learn its true, but nothing more. I'd be rather disheartened to learn what kind of maniac is in charge, but since whatever he is doing seems to have no effect whatsoever, I'm probably fine to continue to ignore it.
Yes, for the great majority of christians god is just the self. To me, that makes them seem very childish, but still it makes their religion mostly innocent, because they still follow their own intuition/feelings more than they follow their book.
For some it is not just the self (though this is still an important part), but they also believe that the story in the bible is literal and they are willing to set their priorities in life according to what is in the book. They literally believe that you could go to either heaven or hell, and they believe that it is their responsibility to guide people to the right path. I used to believe like this, which is why I can sympathize with them, because I know that they do have the courage to follow their convictions and they do see the logical consequences of their religion and are willing to not just pick the nice and happy parts of it, but also the hard parts. That said, these people are the most annoying ones, because they have such a stake in convincing you that they rarely listen, because they believe that what they have to say is much more important than whatever you could offer them. Those who do listen, well, they may lose their faith eventually.
