A friend of mine recently sent me this partial transcript of his
online conversation with a Christian. I decided (with their
permission) that I would share it with others in alt.atheism since It
contains a few well articulated points and because of the way it
starkly contrasts the two differing sensibilities.

=== Bill ====
Hello, Shirley. Thank you for sharing your latest thoughts with me. I
appreciate your honest effort to convey your deeply held convictions
to someone who is critical of them.

=== Shirley ====
Bill thank you for being so understanding and diplomatic in your
responses to my thoughts. You are ever the gentleman and I appreciate
that. Sometimes I am not very kind and I let my emotions dictate how
I say things.

=== Bill ====
When it comes to your deepest held convictions, Shirley, I understand
why you, like most people, might succumb to a loss of emotional
control when those beliefs are challenged.

=== Shirley ====
I am flattered a little that you would say that you were looking
forward to what I might have said further, and I wish I thought it
would be worth my time, but we are like ships in the night.

=== Bill ====
Well, you had expressed some theological ideas regarding salvation
that I found very interesting but highly questionable, both from a
traditional Christian perspective and from a rationalist viewpoint. I
was quite curious as to how you would defend them scripturally and
rationally, hence my disappointment when you declined to do so.

=== Shirley ====
Even as I read this last email, I realized how fruitless it is to try
and explain my relationship with God to you.

=== Bill ====
Subjective experience is always hard to convey to others. I would
expect it to be just as difficult for a devout Muslim to try and
explain her relationship with Allah to you or to me.

=== Shirley ====
Somehow you believe that people serve God because of some sort of
blissful, happy existence that they are promised. Actually, those who
have, in humility and surrender, bowed their heart to the living God,
step into a world that is fraught with conflict and misery.

=== Bill ====
Perhaps so, but it seems to me that every single one of them has his
or her sights set on the blissful afterlife that they believe is
waiting for them after they exit this vale of tears. After all,
without the promise of eternal comfort and the concomitant threat of
eternal suffering, do you think most (if any) Christians would adopt
the Christian worldview? Christianity is quite obviously a reward/
punishment system (adopt certain beliefs and earn a stupendous reward
[via God's supposed grace] or reject those beliefs and suffer severe
consequences) that has been enormously successful in attracting
adherents because of this fundamental dynamic.


=== Shirley ====
Bill, You live a one dimensional life. It is confined to this world.
I live life in two worlds. From the moment I was born of the Spirit
of God, I was thrust into the untenable position of having my
citizenship in heaven, yet having to stay here, engaged in a battle
that will not end until I leave this world. I couldn't begin to
explain to you all that this means because you can't understand. When
I speak to you of spiritual realities, it's sort of like a frog trying
to explain to a pollywog who has not yet been out of the pond, what
"air" and "dry" means. It's impossible.

=== Bill ====
A devout Muslim would say the same to you or any other Christian or
any unbeliever. From their perspective, neither you nor I know
anything of the true spiritual dimension that can be experienced only
through submission to Allah. To me, these psychological states are
merely that, psychological states. You, like Muslims who report a
personal spiritual experience, assign certain attributes to your inner
feelings that may or may not be real, but to you they have
significance. Fine. I have no desire to try and convince you
otherwise.

And of course there is always the possibility that you are truly
experiencing a relationship with Jesus/Yahweh and that I am completely
mistaken. However, in lieu of better evidence than your subjective
offerings, I maintain my rational skepticism of the existence of
Yahweh, Allah, and all other deities.

=== Shirley ====
Remember what I said about being cut off from the source of life?
You are like the rose, fragrant and beautiful as it stands on the
table in the crystal vase. It smells and looks alive, but it is not.
Neither are you. The sad thing is that you don't know it. How do you
communicate with a dead man?

=== Bill ====
Once again, people of other faiths say the same thing about
Christians. Muslims, for instance, think that Christians have been led
astray and do not know the true God. Buddhists will tell you that
unless you attain enlightenment via the eightfold path of the Buddha,
you will never attain the bliss of nirvana. Adherents of other
religions almost all think they are leading the true spiritual life
and that followers of other religions are wrong. As a rational
skeptic, I think Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians,
Bahai, Mormons, Scientologists, and religionists of all other brands
are mistaken and would be better off basing their beliefs upon what
the evidence and rational inquiry warrant.

The fact that so many Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc. are miserable
strongly indicates that their beliefs provide them no special
advantages in life, spiritual or otherwise.

=== Shirley ====
If I have understood you correctly, you think that God, if there is
one, is hiding himself; other wise you would have surely found him by
now with your investigation and searching for truth. I think it's
amazing that you don't see him everywhere.

=== Bill ====
Shirley, if an omnipotent, omniscient God existed and wanted me to
believe he existed beyond reasonable doubt (doubt that he supposedly
would have known I would have because he supposedly created me with a
questioning intellect and knew that I would use it and knew the
conclusions I would reach via that intellect), then he would easily be
able to provide whatever evidence would be sufficient to warrant my
belief, just like you claim he did for you and other believers (and
just like the Bible says was provided to numerous ancient folks who
wanted convincing evidence). I think everyone deserves the same
opportunity to know for sure that a God truly existed if that God
really wanted them to have that certain knowledge.

=== Shirley ====
But you've set the parameters for your search instead of finding out
what God's terms are. You've rejected his hand book because it doesn't
make sense to your mind. If it isn't logical, you reject it.
But the most important things in life are not logical.

=== Bill ====
Shirley, the handbook you claim is from God, a book that you
apparently admit is not logical, depicts that God as killing babies
either directly or by ordering others to do so, directly and
indirectly killing fetuses, directly committing genocide, ordering
others to commit genocide, sending bears to maim and maul 42 children
for calling a prophet a "baldie," having a man killed for gathering
sticks on the Sabbath, having rape victims killed along with their
rapists or in some cases being forced to marry their rapists, having
rebellious boys stoned to death, ordering the execution of unbelievers
and pagans, and systematically approving of slavery while never
condemning it. It does not require logic to conclude that such a deity
is more than questionable. I am amazed that any sane, loving person
would choose to believe that such a deity is loving, forgiving, and
benevolent. I am astonished that anyone living in a modern secular
society, in the age of science and enlightened human legal systems,
would view such a deity as anything but an ancient, primitive human
construct.

I would also ask you to ponder why logic and rational inquiry should
be less important or even detrimental when applied to the Bible, the
Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon, or any other religious
text, as you seem to believe (assuming I have not misunderstood you).
Do you not use your reasoning skills when evaluating competing
religious claims? Is logic of no use to you when considering other
religious beliefs or when examining the statements of an atheist like
me? Are you really positing that the Bible cannot withstand the close
critical scrutiny that is appropriately applied to other texts that
make profoundly important claims?

It is because I have read the Bible and am intimately familiar with
these stories that I reject the claim that it depicts a real deity.
It is because I have extensively studied the history of the Bible and
Christianity that I have come to understand that the Bible is a purely
human creation, a mixture of ancient mythology, pseudohistory,
history, theology, and religious propaganda that has been modified
extensively over the millennia.

Shirley, I really urge you to read the Bible with a rational mind and
a loving heart, with minimal emotional bias. If you do so and still
think the Bible is the inspired word of a perfect, loving, forgiving
being, then I would admit that you and I clearly have insurmountably
different views of what constitutes loving, forgiving, benevolent
behavior.

=== Shirley ====
I will continue to grieve for you. You think that all I have are
"comforting beliefs" but what I really have is communion and intimacy
with almighty God...I have received His very life into this mortal
body of mine. All you have is yourself and your limitations that lead
to nowhere. So I grieve for you...can't help it.
I also love you,
Shirley

=== Bill ====
I guess, in a sense, that I grieve for you as well, Shirley, because I
would love to see you embrace reason and evidence as the determinants
of truth. Since I believe that rationalist ethics and metaphysics are
greatly and demonstrably superior to religious ethics and metaphysics,
I am saddened that you reject a worldview that can free you from dogma
and empower you to discover reliable knowledge about this amazing
universe you and I inhabit.

I guess we will have to respectfully disagree with each other's
worldviews and share a sense of loss for that. Still, I believe no one
is beyond salvation, whether that means God and religion or scientific
rationalism.

As always, with my best regards,

Bill