Ah, I saw this on several websites that I frequent. If only most Christians (or religious individuals) would follow such guidelines in their discussions with us...
Also remember this chart can be taken both ways. In my experience I've a lot of non-christians be just as close minded as christians can be.
True, but by default most of us are christians. It would take open mindedness to get to the agnostic perception in the first place. 'Veteran' atheists are likely to be more or less close minded because they have thought of the issue many times before. There is no evidence, there will be no evidence. Eventually it's just every day nature to reject the concept of god. They find it so illogical that they denote the notion of an all-knowing being as soon as it comes to mind. Hope that made sense, pretty drunk right now...
if your going to duscuss somthing like spirituality and god [well the christian versions] then this will not work faith is an important thing for them you gotta learn to meet them half way
so wait a second. is there a middle ground, or was his comment pointless? perhaps you just proved my point.
Not at all. He's just saying that you have to be aware that Christians beliefs are based on faith. If your unwilling to accept that for arguements sake then your arguements are going to go no where. You cannot disprove faith. Its a belief. So, instead of taking personal shots at someone who has faith, just look past that and work on the more tangible aspects of the religion.
I'm not taking shots at anybody. You've never been in an argument? Anyway, let's look at faith. 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability. 2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact. 3. belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims. 4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty. 5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith. I like #2. With this mindset, i might as well worship the tooth fairy. There is no reason to believe in it so why would you? It baffles me why someone would believe in something that has absolutely no evidence of ever existing.
The burden is not on us to adjust how you feel about your stimuli in such a way as to make to make it more comfortable to you. That's your burden. The untestability of faith is precisely its folly. Believing in superstitions that can't be tested is lunacy. That's not a personal shot. That's just the truth. To say any differently would be to deny the reality of insanity, in that it exists and without a testable standard you can't draw a serious distinction between them. That's not to say faithful people are crazy, most of them are merely trained slaves. You might not like it, but it's been true for centuries and people have been writing about it just as long.