Question to religious types

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is your visceral reaction to people who have contradictory experiences of God (compared to yours), or no experience with God?

Visceral? Can't say that I have one. Should I? Strictly speaking I come from a minority tradition, so perhaps that's the reason, if it is to be expected?

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No. Why would I? Do you? Is that what this is all about? Do you find it difficult to come to terms with people thinking about the world (and their place in it) in a radically different way to yourself?

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That's an odd question. Probably a good deal stranger than you think. Play it back to yourself and you should see why.

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I can answer the first question there; no. But because of the answer (that is: no) I can't actually answer the second.

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All belief is heavily based on personal experience, darling.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Will all respect, I've "played" this issue in my head plenty.

Yes, of course you have. Would I have written what I did if I thought otherwise? No, of course not.

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Possibly. But then I'm under no obligation to answer it directly, if at all. Though I do genuinely believe that you can't divorce belief (of any kind and in anything) from personal experience.

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I was trying for both. I did consider something on the theme of ducks (there are quite a few) but then that would have looked strange. So it was either darling or a variation on dear. I like to think that I made the right decision.

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I find the mindset here odd; do you view every viewpoint that is not yours as a challenge of some kind? Or are you some kind of secular evangelist now? I don't mean any of that - or anything written in this thread at all - as any kind of personal attack, by the way. My default setting might well be sardonic, but I don't try to come across as actively hostile.

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What ever makes you think that I'm trying to defeat your argument? Is everything a contest of some kind?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I don't think we're talking on the same issue, here.

Entirely possible.

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Right... yeah... 'methodology'? If ever a word was over-used...

(4am, damn it)

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Quite in that context would imply specifics, I think. No, no specifics. Just words.

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No, it's not that. It's just that you're oddly vehement about this. And insistent about its importance. So, you know, a case of finding words that fit. Those don't, actually, thus your seemingly genuine state of bemusement. Or if they do fit, they don't fit very well. But better than anything else I could think of at the time.

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That would make slightly more sense, yeah. But, again, why bother to resolve logically your argument? It doesn't seem important to me. You seem to find it very important, which is interesting. Why?