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Upon mature consideration, I have determined in the interest of my soul and sanity to participate in no more discussions of the existence of God or debates on the validity or otherwise of Christianity or any other religion.

I am content to remain a vile and miserable dupe, believing that there IS an intelligent if not alays intelligible to us divine entity and that the Nicene Christian formulation comes as close to truth as is possible here. Leave me to my pitiful oppressed existence, if you know better; save the souls of beings more deserving of liberation from the clutches of the Church.

And I will try not to envy your God-like - excuse me, material-like march to the heights of the Theory of Everything. Certainly I will not try - without specific orders or invitation - to show you what God has not seen fit to make clear.

I WILL happily discuss matters of general interest such as the Eucharist, the Paradox of Predestination, what certain holidays actually mean, Nada on the Mountain, and all like that there, where a productive exchange of views might just happen.

AND of course, I reserve the right to point a finger at some of the more wildly ignorant statements that appear from time to time in the debates I will not be joining.

Cool story bro.

@Philologos

That is quite understandable. The same issues seem to be discussed here on a regular basis when in reality there is little to add.

You could just extract a "Best of 91 versus Awesomely Glorious" compilation and reference it each time.

But hey, I will bet your professional association meets chew the cud as much as mine.

I concur with your decision. Discussion and arguments in theology are futile and a waste of time.

ruveyn

You gotta pick your fights.

Ive always had the philosophy that you just now announced that you are adopting: of just focusing on small interesting questions and avoiding being "a strident fill-in-the-blank" who makes pointless frontal partisan assaults on other folks core beliefs.

But even when you think you're keeping it light you can ingite a firestorm of debate.

On another website i commented in a joking way about something another poster said about an event in the news.
He responded with a several page long bareknuckled angry dissertation complete with statistics etc. showing that he had been grinding that particular axe in private for a long time and I had just tripped into his mental hornets nest!.

On one hand if I said nothing in reply it would look to him like he won ( i cant allow that).

His essay was long on quantity but was low on rhetorical quality and could easily be refuted.

But on the other hand if I did resond- then the discussion would degenerate into a "who's holocaust was worse" type of debate that would make both of us look like petty idiots to the rest of website. And, it wouldve eaten alot of time as well.

So, I chose not to respond. Like I said- you gotta pick your fights.
But even then dont be surprised if you still get drawn into the vortex!

Yeah - that is how it was with my brother - tried to keep it on a high plane - - constantly tempted to toss stuff back. Took a lot to cut it off because of the That Way he Wins Syndrome - the only way I stuck in academia as long as I did was unwillingness to give them the satisfaction.

It takes willpower - but I have had a lot of practice not being drawn.

Well, we are Aspies. What can one expect?

One could expect - and from some one finds - a greater than average frequency of dispassionate factual discussion, with of course variation in the accuracy of the facts.

And yet there is a lot of the spirit of Nyaa Nyaa.