mickiel and other believers of his ilk come up with all kinds of excuses to avoid answering the tough questions. In this particular case, mickiel is claiming he dislikes the way I converse. A convenient tactic that gets him off the hook. He has no logical answers that will appease anyone with half a brain so he sticks his fingers in his ears and hopes the seed of reason doesn't germinate. Pitiful.
I wish "believers" like mickiel could open their eyes some more: ask themselves whether it matters that what they believe is true or not. And if it does matter to them, they should be questioning their most basic supernatural assumptions...whether it's even reasonable to hold them.
Question whether it's actually reasonable to take the tale of one ancient desert tribe - among all the religious, superstitious delusions of human history - as somehow veridical. Try REALLY reading your holy book, asking "Is it actually the most reasonable inference from the description of what this god character says and does, that he would actually be the moral standard? Does the Bible actually READ like this god is the wisest being one could possibly imagine?
Not when you realise how many things god says that sound as limited and non-omniscient as any other person...and not when god seems to share pretty much the same limited moral horizon as the ancient people who wrote the stories. Not, when you are reading what is purportedly the message of the most wise being of all, you secretly find yourself wondering if what he just said was really all that wise...and find yourself looking for excuses to either ignore certain portions concerning this all wise being...or looking for how other followers of the faith excuse them.
IMO, there shouldn't even BE an apologetics industry - if the Bible really did represent the best we have on morality. Wouldn't the wisest of all books stand the test of time, rather than create a flourishing industry of people making excuses for what it says.
Certainly supernaturalism has it's compensations: the social network, and some of the stories can fit some emotional desires or needs. But it's often when someone de-converts that the other side of the coin - the negatives - of having been a follower of invisible deities comes into relief: Living a life believing, worrying, about an entire supernatural realm, in which your fate lies, that doesn't even exist. Grappling with all those vexing theological conundrums, "Why would god do X?..." Trying to constantly juggle the supernatural beliefs you've been handed against the constant oppression of real-world facts.
M O N S T E R
