Has General Discussion Been Hostile to Religious Believers recently?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

372. Prophet, about your analogy to your lover,

the difference is that your lover, that I may or may not like, is a REAL PERSON that I can interact with and make a judgment about whether I would want to hang out with them or not. Or a judgment about whether they treat you right or not.

Whereas the concept of God is something I have seen no evidence for, in spite of being a former liberal Protestant. I have seen no evidence for the efficacy of prayer either. I've had good times in my life, I've had serious long-term illness, more than once, where I was not sure if I would die or not, I've been through several kinds of my own hell in my life. I lost my beloved sister, my best friend in the world, through cancer when I was 35 and she was 42. That was not god's will. That was just incurable cancer in spite of the best of care in the most renowned cancer hospital in the world. That death destroyed my parents and me for a decade. My parents did not live long enough to get past that personal cratering of our world because she was gone. I'm past it. It was over two decades ago, but I will never "get over" it. I will just keep going.

We all have our own battles to fight in our lives and we cannot know what other people have been through. People who act like they have a "personal relationship with Jesus" and that I should have one too, would think I am crazy if I said "I have no evidence that Jesus exists so I as far as I know, until he calls me on the phone or shows up in person in front of me, that I cannot have a personal relationship with Jesus."


People don't need religion to do good things and have morality. Christopher Hitchens asked the famous question, "Is there anything good a religious person can do that a non-religious person cannot do?" and he got no answer. You could do good and be motivated by your faith, or you could do good because it's the right thing to do according to your personal morality you fashioned for yourself.

The same could apply to the bad that some religious people do. Some people can be evil and horrible without any reference to god or "god told me to do this".

I think it starts with compassion for the suffering of other people and trying to cut them some slack for being mean or angry or whatever. To try to put yourself outside yourself and to imagine what it must be like for someone else's pain to be like. If you can't imagine what it is like, to at least have some empathy. And realize that when someone is mad at you for no reason, the problem is not within yourself, it's within them. Laura Huxley (Aldous' wife) wrote a book called "You Are Not the Target".


However, people who can't understand that I do not share their beliefs that their religion is the only true religion, or any other religion is the only true religion, and want me to be like them, are out of my life. I don't want to argue with them because I have no evidence that satisfies me personally. They have no evidence that satisfies me personally. I trust doctors and science, not faith.