Religious Faith vs. Atheist Conviction

[Cyberman]

Apparently there are also admirable, reasonable atheists too

Nope; there is only one who fits that description.

And every single atheist here will claim it's them, when the truth is it's actually me.

[Simon Moon]

What ideas does she have that she has to compartmentalise? You're talking shit.

Talking snake, men living in fish for 3 days, the sun stopping in the sky for 3 hours (with no other culture on the planet reporting such an event), many holy men coming out of their graves and walking around Jerusalem, healing leprosy with birds blood, striped rods causing sheep to be born with stripes, dragons inhabiting Babylon....

Should I go on?

[Rampant.A.I.]

Hi frodo. Still lying by accusing people of doing something they don't do?

What I can't ask for reasoning?

I have solid reasoning that convinces me to believe in God. Is that irrational or delusional?? I can't see that it is and so far no one has been able to find fault with it.

You in particular tor can't defend your position to me and yet you call me a liar? Your refusal to accept that I can deduce something to accept it seems like a delusional stance to me.

You keep saying that, and yet you can't or won't present what that reasoning is, yet constantly demand others provide their reasoning for you to critique.

Either you're disingenuous about your "solid reasoning" which seems to be utterly subjectively based, the dictionary definition of delusional; or you're aware your reasoning isn't externally verifiable, and are lying to reverse the burden of proof on everyone else.

Your definition of "reasonable" seems to be:

Presuppositionalism is a school of Christian apologetics that believes the Christian faith is the only basis for rational thought. It presupposes that the Bible is divine revelation and attempts to expose flaws in other worldviews. It claims that apart from presuppositions, one could not make sense of any human experience, and there can be no set of neutral assumptions from which to reason with a non-Christian.[1]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppos...pologetics

[Bob Kelso]

Is she really stark raving insane? Is she the world's most convincing liar?
Is there anyone here who knows someone else like this?

I'm in agreement with Simon, classic case of cognitive dissonance avoidance.

I know quite a few people like her, and have a few in my family as well, it's not uncommon.

What ideas does she have that she has to compartmentalise? You're talking shit.

Perhaps all the fictitious bullshit she believes in that she refuses to subject to critical thinking?

[Angrboda]

One of the more popular theories of meaning is the network theory of meaning, that individual words acquire meaning by the network of words and meanings they're embedded in. Thus the word cat doesn't acquire meaning directly, but from the associated 'net' of meanings surrounding it, words like animal, fur, mammal, aware, mobile, and so on. In the network theory of meaning, each meaning is supported by and supports other meanings in the network. There are no absolute meanings, all meaning is relative to all other meanings. There are no anchors.

One of the quirks of human psychology is that we're often not aware of our own biases. If our belief or disbelief isn't absolute, but relative to a network of other meanings which we're not cogniscent of, and others have their specific position embedded relative to another, different network, it can be puzzling how and what supports that others' belief or disbelief. It's like being a spider, poised on a web strung between two trees, and catching the sun glinting off another spider in between two other trees. If we don't see the web of the other spider, it looks like the other spider is literally floating in mid-air, unsupported by anything. Only when we become aware of our own invisible means of support do we realize there is no mysterious 'floating' to be explained, just a spider with a web that is like our own, but obviously different.

I'm not saying that there isn't cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization going on, but I would suggest that the way people of faith manage their beliefs is not all that different from the way any of you manage your beliefs. You're ignorant of how your own mind works to manage its beliefs, so you are ill-equipped to place the same mechanisms that you employ in another when you find someone whose views and biases are so different than your own. It may be less a case of them having a defect in how they function than it is that you have a defect in your understanding of how you (and others) function.