This Has to Stop

[beepete]

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The reason I signed up for the forum was that my thinking had been challenged by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. I'm not here to evangelize or try and win arguments but rather to try and recalibrate my compass. So far it hasn't been that pleasant an experience (yours has probably been the most welcoming response), but so be it.
My dilemma is this - no, actually I will keep it to myself for now.
Yes - a lie is a lie is a lie and killing and harming others for a lie (or the supposed truth) is evil.
I will never be an atheist but can see myself well on the way to being an agnostic. I can't prove nor disprove the existence of God.
Right and wrong, however, are reasonably apparent. Killing children because they are an Amalekite or a Foetus is clearly wrong.
And I agree that ideology can and does produce evil. A suicide bomber is a case in point. When it comes to the Taliban, Isis and so forth all you can do to protect others is to kill them as they are so wedded to their ideology (and they admit this themselves).
Your analogy of rancid manure is fair but if a person is genuinely attempting to deprogramme themselves, harsh analogies may well just drive them deeper into their nice, safe, secure delusion.
Anyway, I won't take up any more of your time. I genuinely didn't come here to push a barrow or argue, but it would seem that this is really a forum for quite heated debate, which is fair enough. Hope all goes well with you and yours, thanks again for your time.

Mine was the most welcoming? Well, damn. I admit I was intentionally holding back from antagonizing you since you did not seem like someone I'd ever seen around here before and you'd have to have said something extraordinarily stupid to get my ire up right from the get-go.
I'm going to have to disagree about the fetus/abortion thing on a practicality standpoint (this is where critical thinking is really...critical) but yes, Amalekites, simply by dint of their identity, don't automatically deserve condemnation. Action merits condemnation and unfortunately, beliefs based on insane ideologies inform actions and that's the underlying issue.
Your obstinacy is just one of the many problems with this whole enterprise. We can expose all the flaws and outright horrors of your ideology but rather than take that as an inspiration to re-examine it and perhaps even take a trial run of suspending belief to see how it fits, you retreat into your turtle shell. Just because it comes across as hostile doesn't make it untrue, and given that it rarely works even with the 'nice' approach, it's a poor excuse on your part to ignore it.
The fact that you can admit to it being a delusion, and my analogy being fair, it is genuinely baffling you can still hold so tightly to it. That is the most saddening and frustrating thing about this indoctrination's effects. I hate whoever is responsible for doing this to you because I can tell there's a different, potentially better person scratching at the surface trying to get out but still being smothered by that layer of dusty, grimy faith. It's keeping you from being more honest because you're pretty much admitting you don't care if it's true or not; whether that makes you a better person overall in and of itself is perhaps not certain, but the potential being stifled and squandered is damn disappointing. Not to mention how it's likely to then bleed into the next generation because of what you think is necessary as far as passing it along to your wee ones.

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I have obviously not articulated myself adequately. I could never be comfortable pursuing something that I had come to believe was a delusion (no matter how comfortable that position may have been). I was referring to other people who may have been questioning their belief system and had come to this forum to look for answers. It is both a liberating and humiliating experience when your system of belief comes tumbling down like a house of cards.