Experience is not necessary.
People tend to get caught up on the experience angle.
I have no experience licking a dog's turd, it doesn't mean someone out there enjoys it.
The irony of theists believing in America's politicized atmosphere is that they have forgotten how to be Christ-like.
Ghandi got it right:
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
When it comes to personal interpretation, you can believe whatever you want of the bible and god.
That is the basic issue with theism, the leading cause of it being implausible.
From your link:
Working from that perspective, it is easy to understand what an atheist such as myself would find wrong with it. Surely, you do not need me to go into it.
Most theists do not seem to comprehend their hateful attitudes toward non-believers as such. From what I have been able to understand, they view themselves as spreading love in the name of their god. And then they wonder why non-believers view their god as the villain.
The issue many theists do not seem to understand is that there is no reason to prove something does not exist when there is already zero evidence to support it even exists. Then when theists start getting into their apologists arguments, making wilder claims of god not existing as part of the...
I suppose it depends on the bad experience. Are we talking being raped while under the influence of a mind-altering drug, which would be more equivalent to suffering from religious abuse, or just that the dentist did a poor aesthetic job?
The willful ignorance of some people to not recognize the harm done to others due to one's religious beliefs is probably the highlight of cognitive dissonance.
An insightful article that really speaks to me.
The limits of religious freedom: America must come to grips with when faith groups limit personal liberty
For the same reason we create superheroes to represent the better part of ourselves, early man created god for the same purpose (but failed, in my opinion, due to the fact that the god of the bible ends up resembling a villain---it makes sense in a way since the archetype is basically molded...
No qualms here. Brilliant article.
If agreeing with Zuckerman means I have the mentality of a high schooler, I suggest some people step up their strawmen.
I think it is more logically akin to one reasonably expecting a message directly from the source instead of blindly trusting a messenger full of claims. After all, if I really wanted to suspend all reason to simply believe that Zeus was a real god, I would still understand and know that just...
Except that there is zero evidence that the message is from a deity at all. The message could very well simply be a mental symptom of the individual's over active imagination. There is no logic in believing the message based on a fallible conception of divine authority.