On Hell and Forgiveness

[vulcanlogician]

Oh fuck that.  She's as mean as any of us here.  She just uses kindness as a cover.  She passive-aggressively uses derision to demean people she doesn't respect.  She's offensive in her own way, you've just bought into her schtick.
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That's fucking funny you say that when the people not being open minded about it are CL and Neo.  Yet me and Kit are getting all the shit for talking about it.  I think you're confused about what's actually what here, vulcan.

Look. I got annoyed with the thread a few pages back when the conversation became entangled in easily-resolved semantics. As to my thoughts concerning open-mindedness and what it might be like to post here as a theist, those were my sincere, direct assessments of those two issues and were not meant to be directed at you or kit. They were in response to aroura's comments (and thus indirectly in response to Kit's posts, I suppose). Aside from that, take what I said at face value.

Whether or not a theist's perceptions of God represent a "delusion" (in the sense of being a firmly maintained yet irrational belief) was the conversation I was interested in having. That conversation didn't happen. It didn't even come close to happening. It started to happen for like a second, and then this other, very stupid conversation about mental illness happened instead.

FWIW, I share your attitude concerning the stigmatization of mental illness. I also think that some of CL's earlier statements demonstrated a lack of insight concerning a mentally ill person's capacity to generate justified criticisms--something I didn't quite catch on my first readthrough of her posts. Were I of a different temperament, I might have drawn a line in the sand over it. But I tend to favor aroura's approach, and I said as much in my last post that you quoted.

I do have claws; they're simply retractable. I feel no need to go for CL's jugular. By internet metrics, I find her to be quite reasonable and sincere. Show me some unbridled ignorance and I'll reveal my fangs. Otherwise, I think like this.

It's quite possible that I'm "confused about what's actually what." If that's the case, then you have problems with CL that aren't my problems. And (if that's the case) you should certainly understand that what I said couldn't possibly have been directed at you.

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Despite not knowing how that statistic was derived,I suspect that had the question been asked differently the number would change. Is the bible literally the Word of God? IMO yes. Is everything in the Word of God to be taken literally? IMO no. Do you see the difference?

That post was pointed at one person in particular, to deflect a claim that only a minority can be deluded.