(February 12, 2015 at 1:42 pm)emilynghiem Wrote: Hi @Brakeman
For people to hear and understand each other,
the Forgiveness has to be mutual. Christians and Atheists cannot go into discussions already rejecting and assuming the other is false.
So the first step is forgiving that we have our differences and that, yes, there are assumptions and mistakes made on all sides. The corrections are mutual, and when people realize the changes are also mutual, then there isn't this battle of wills working "against" each other to "try to make the other wrong" -- the battle becomes a shared effort to "try to make things right."
There's no need to "try to make things right". I don't need Christians to forgive me.
And I do not intend to forgive Christianity for telling a 6-year old child, that his atheist father is going to spend eternity being tortured and burned - whether he's a good man or not - simply because he wouldn't believe something that's utterly unbelievable. I - as a "good Christian" was going to Heaven, never to see my father again. "That's f-ing heaven, for you sick, sick people?" I thought. And that's when you lost me. Oh, yeah - and then I also went to school and learned some basic science... And read the damn Bible...
The only way to "make things right" - as far as I'm concerned - is for organized religion to stop existing. Yeah, I know - pie in the sky (in a manner of speaking) but you've got to dream big.
I don't care what people believe, as long as they keep it to themselves. And obey the law. Real, relevant law, created by people and not their imaginary friends.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
