What I said was in no way an insult. I have read your posts with great interest for years!
Thanks, I don't feel insulted.
But in the religious arena you DO believe what you want, what you want to be true.
Okay, for some things yes. Some things, no.
I don't believe in God because I want to. I believe in God because He responded and I know something is there.
I don't really know what it was,
exactly, so as I try to deduce finer details I do start getting into preference and choice.
But at the root it isn't a choice, it's more of a conclusion.
Every religious person in the modern world is believing what they want, with zero evidence.
I can't agree to that.
Faith is a fancy sounding way of saying "I believe in vastly improbable things without a good reason to."
I dunno - if the believer didn't think they had a good reason to believe it then I don't see why they would.
There has to be some reason for believing particular things - otherwise peoples' beliefs would be unrecognizable chaos - and whether or not that reason is good enough is their call and not your's.
What isn't good enough for you may be good enough for another.
That's why religions have profoundly mutually exclusive articles of faith; because there is no way to validate the veracity of their claims.
That's true.
Religions are simply "People believing whatever they want."
I see what you're saying - maybe it's just a little too nuanced for me.
There's a lot of believing what you want in religion, but it's not just simply that.
And the religious beliefs on Earth are almost as vast as the human imagination. That should be a giant, flashing warning sign.
The data is a noisy mess and it's hard to make sense out of it