why does this forum care so much about religion

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
It's quite ridiculous to see atheists telling theists what theists believe. God forbid that people, yes theists too, actually think and think differently about things.

Just a question. How many of you (meaning luckyme, vhawk, midge, chrisv, whoever) have read any of the following:

1. Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich
2. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers by Friedrich Schleiermacher
3. The Divine Milieu by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
4. The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
5. Philosophical Fragments by Soren Kierkegaard

I will list more if desired.

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I don't think I've made any grand point about what theists believe. I've tried to explain what theism IS, and I think I'm just as qualified to talk about that as a theist. It is impossible to come up with some set of things that all theists believe, save for one: theism. After that, their beliefs are unique and not really related to the theism at all. I will make some claims about what INDIVIDUAL theists believe, people who call themselves Christians, for example, but I'm often surprised to find out the things that people believe while still calling themselves Christian. At least for Christianity, there is a theoretically "correct" set of beliefs that being a Christian implies. Of course its vanishingly unlikely that any actual Christian has all of those beliefs.

In short, I'm more than happy to meet the theist on his terms wrt his beliefs. I don't really care WHAT they are, he can present them to me and I'll argue them on their own merits.

Can you give an example of who these atheists are that you are angry with, and an example of when they told theists what they believe?