Lucycat
Sponsor
Nothing to apologise for!I don't believe I put words in anyone else's mouth... except maybe @Lucycat and for that I am very sorry!
My take on all this is that as a child I believed in God, Santa and the tooth fairy in equal measure. I had evidence of the existence of all three. I had to accept them if I were to get the promised rewards. I even had to pretend after I knew the truth in order to continue the facade. Bit by bit this was replaced by fact. Santa and the tooth fairy was a parent giving gifts. God - well no you still have to believe that one. 'Just believe it'.
I am currently studying statistics and trying to get my head round the research methodology. I have learned the meaning of Null Hypothesis. In this case my Null Hypothesis would be 'Gods do not exist'. If someone can disprove it then I will happily reject it. However before anyone tells me about the Bible being proof, I would suggest that if one is to consider one book referring to a god then we would also have to produce all books referring to a god in order for the evidence to have any statistical meaning. Evidence needs to be observable, so believing is not good enough for me.
I respect everybody's choice. I do not respect people that come knocking on my door trying to tell me about their views on their particular religion. Last time that happened I was distressed and them asking me if I had ever considered why people do evil things led me to collapse in floods of tears, standing there on the doorstep in front of these complete strangers. I spotted the same people in the village on Wednesday. They went straight past my house, so maybe they have learned a lesson.
I am interested in religion. I watch a lot of religious debates on TV. I have read the bible cover to cover. I have not read each and every religious text because I am not interested enough. That would be like asking me to read about another countries fairy stories just because I was interested enough to read my own.
I know people are very precious about their faith and belief. People very quickly get offended by the asking of a question. However it seems to me that there is a lack of understanding regarding those of us who have discarded religion. Loss of faith is even used as diagnostic criteria for some illnesses and I find that offensive.