What is a believer?

[Anonymous]

Living forever is one thing, but if you pop over to the "little girl feel good" thread -- it's evident that the optimistic, son of God, live forever short story, has turned into levels of retarded thought that you can't even begin peel back.

The dogmatic, uncompromising, blind devotion to the most stupid, unfounded, illogical of ideas. (I love Harris, BTW, it was me that posted a link to his book earlier - we should be friends.)

I guess it's just tough for me to think that that one happy thought, that snap of the fingers that brings community and support and love and eternal life, MUST somehow lead to this dogmatic ridiculousness. Apparently we can't have nice things I guess. I was never given a placeholder as a child, so it's doubly difficult for me an perhaps I'll never understand, but it feel like there should be more to the story when this level of idiocy is involved.

[Anonymous]

Right, we'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt. This is why you expect rational adults to not believe in Santa Clause and the tooth fairy. When you drive, you expect on coming traffic to stay on the other side of the street. Therefore when you see a mass of people believing in Jesus, you feel that this must be meaningful to them in a deeper sense.

But there isn't deeper meaning when it comes to religion as practiced by the masses. Listen to the sermons, read the versus that are often quoted, look at the posts in this forum from people talking about the good that religion has brought to them.

To most, religion is a repetitive mantra, an old familiar way of thought and action, a comfortable reference for individual and group behavior, and the answer to questions that they don't or wont ponder on their own.

Whoever sees beauty and love in a mass shooting is at least a bit deranged.

[Anonymous]

This is a believer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts