In the meantime, some Christians demonstrate their peaceful minds

That just leaves the insulting a religion part.

But a religion is made up of people.

If a person were to set out to insult a religion, that is insulting the religious person.

Absent this is not the elitist heaven of the Oxford debating society, it is a forum for grannies. I do understand your exasperation as I often fell like leaving too, but for different reasons. But there are clever people on this site, there are intellectual ones too, funny ones, caring ones, politically astute ones and people just searching for company.

Gransnet cannot be everything to everyone. We have to take what we can from it and accept its limitations.

Besides, if you do not post again there are some who will believe you have indeed been struck down by a thunderbolt!

Therein lies the problem I guess?

What some people say are not insults when they speak, are insults when they are received. hmm.
Too early in the day for me to solve that one.

Why doesnt thatbags insult her mormon's friend's religion while she is with her mormon friend?

Because she know that that would insult her friend.

So she knows not to do that.

soontobe It might help you if you read bag's post directly above again. She is not insulting Christians, never mind your god, and has pointed out, as have several other posters several times, that criticism and insults are two totally different things. I am fast approaching the point that the direction in which this thread is going – as have so many on so many other subjects in the last few weeks – is making me want to stand in my garden and hurl insults and abuse up to the sky at the top of my voice. I very much doubt that I shall be struck down by lightning. I'll let you know later. After that, I think I shall resign from Gransnet as the level of debate has become abysmal beyond description. Such a shame – I used to enjoy this site.

I have never heard RD speak, so I have no idea whether he criticises or ridicules or insults people or their ideas.

There is a difference though between a idea and a belief.

Rd does not insult Christians. He criticises some religious ideas that some Christians adopt as part of their psyche.

ana, not sure what your point is about RD being polite to people's faces. My point is that publicly at least, he's always polite. The fact that he says things some people don't want to hear and decide to take offence at is not impolite. He doesn't criticise or ridicule people; he criticises and ridicules things people say and ideas they espouse.

Feeling insulted when an idea you espouse is criticised is a problem the insultee has. Apply the same argument to political ideas and see how it goes. Someone criticises something a politician "stands for", a politician I might have "identified with" until then. Am I insulted?

With christians, if you insult christians, you insult God.

And if you insult God, you insult christians.

I personally am not hurt by it by that is not relevant.

You say that you insult religious ideas.
Insult is unkind.

It doesnt sound to me like you insulted your mormon friend.

Interesting that you said that you did not set out to insult your Mormon friend. Good.

But all this is digression: the point, as absent has said, is that insulting a religious idea or belief is not and never will be the same as insulting a person.

And criticism is not insult, not by definition anyhow, yet that is what some people argue is the case.

You don't need to turn it around, ana. You could indeed apply it to atheists who are so certain that there are no gods that they will not brook any discussion or argument about what they believe and who say argument and discussion and valid criticism hurts their feelings and insults their religion.

And you should apply it to such people.

But RD, and other atheists I know, are open to argument. RD never argues that "this is so even without evidence". He argues on the basis of evidence available to anyone and everyone.

One of the problems he and others face is that some religious people insist that normal worldly evidence doesn't apply to faith. It does, however, apply to the worldly constructs of religions and how religions affect people who do not wish to be affected by religion.

I realized last night that I hadn't explained the 1-7 scale very well. the 1 on the scale represents certainty that god(s) exist; the 7 represents certainty that there are no gods.

soon, in answer to your question, no, I did not set out to insult my Mormon friend, but I did tell her that I could not believe the Joseph .smith story on which Mormonism is based, that I think it is rubbish. I also told her and others that I found it disgusting that black people in the Mormon church were not allowed to be priests, and various other things. Someone less secure in themselves and their faith might well have taken things I said in explaining why she was wasting her time trying to convert me as insults both to her and to her religion.

absent, I suspect you are right about the templates.

It is zeal for your house that has consumed me
The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me

Psalm 69 v 9

Perhaps there's a template for these kinds of abusive letters on some self-proclaimed Christian website and that's why they are so similar.

As these 'love letters' sound so similar, perhaps they have all been written by one very unbalanced person with several pseudonyms (and not a Christian thought in their head).

Meanwhile Nemo swims serenely around in the background.

It should be remembered that criticising and questioning faith is not the same as insulting and abusing its followers. This thread is not about discourteous, insulting or abusive behaviour towards Moslems or any other faith. It is about self-proclaimed Christians being discourteous, insulting, abusive and even threatening towards one individual because has questioned and discussed Christianity.

I wonder if it is not so much a person's beliefs that people have difficulty in separating from the person (and I agree, by the way, that a person's beliefs will affect a person's outlook on life and their approach to it), but the fact that to a person of faith, the faith (whatever it is), or the possession of faith is very important to them, precious even, so that when they think someone is attacking precepts of that faith the person feels, as it were, wounded. I can understand that.

Turn that statement around and it can apply to people of no faith as well.

And of course RD would be polite if any of us met him. Unless we were threatening him physically or hurling abuse at him, why wouldn't he be?

Night night Bags. If you haven't already gone to sleep.

From the website: "we advertised a reassuring, “humanised” message"

Are they sure that was reassuring to everyone?

Arrogance or what?!

Why can't atheists live and let live? Why do they have to go in for stuff like this Why???

Perhaps I should have written, why do you think it is ok for people to insult muslim beliefs and other beliefs?

thatbags. I presume you do not insult your mormon friend? Or her beliefs.
So why do you think it is ok for people to insult or needle muslims and other beliefs?

I think that's where we differ, jings. I don't think RD thinks he knows the truth. He is simply basing his beliefs on what evidence he and others (all of us) have access to. If evidence for gods ever showed up he'd believe in them, as would all the atheists I know. Faith, as I understand it, doesn't require evidence in the same way (or in any way, possibly? I don't know as I have no experience of faith).

RD says very clearly in one of his books that he has a confidence of 6 on a scale of 1 to 7 that gods don't exist. That is not certainty and it's allowing for the possibility that he could be wrong.

But, all that is digression. He respects people whatever anyone thinks to the contrary. That is also perfectly clear from his books. He doesn't respect certain ideas and he doesn't respect certain kinds of behaviour, such as trolling. Just like the rest of us.

I don't think the Pope or the Archbishops themselves feel 100% certain about the existence of God. Impossible for us humans.

What would be the point in him - or anyone - "seeking truth"? No one is ever going to know this particular truth. Well, not whilst they are in a position wherein they could impart that truth to the rest of us. No - I think Dawkins is convinced he knows the truth.

Oh! If we Christians could only be that sure!