In Reply to: Re: How I'm feeling today about it all, today and what' to come posted by Zither on March 16, 2006 at 10:55:21:
You are welcome to express your views & your spiritual journey & I hope that despite disagreements that you will find this board to be a safe place to express yourself. If you have any doubt about that please read our Rules & Guidelines & don't be afraid to quote them if you need to. We put a number of safeguards in the rules to hopefully try to prevent posters from dissing each other.
Disagreements are bound to happen, however. Mr. Don also has a right to discuss his strong Christian views, as he has done. In fact, quite a number of posters have Christian beliefs. Also, Moonshiner has a right to discuss his openly agnostic/athiestic views as he often does, bringing interesting things to the discussion table. I really don't see athiest views receiving less respect on this board, though disagreements are sometimes quite animated simply because a number of other posters hold strong opposing views. This is also to be expected as we each re-establish our right to our own beliefs, after the cult experience.
Perhaps part of the confusion is that you have not fully articulated your beliefs so readers don't fully know where you're coming from when you talk about God. That in turn may well be because you don't fully subscribe to any one 'traditional' view, whether Christianity or athiesm or even the standard definition of humanism. I'm not saying you have to spell our your beliefs to 'carve out a niche' so to speak, but I do think that once readers get to know where your beliefs fall, they will tend to take that more into account when addressing you. Just a guess.
Obviously some Christians feel a need to immediately clarify issues when you refer to God, to clarify what the Bible says in contrast to how you describe God. The post below is a good example of that & I think as long as posters can disagree while respecting each other, animated discussions can be good.
Again, you are very welcome here.