[quote author=“Salt Creek”]
You could start by spending a little less mental and typing energy simply broadcasting the party line, but this may be a long shot for you. Spreading the ‘good news’ is part of your programming, and you automatically proceeded with it just as a paramecium invades its host. It’s part of the paramecium’s nature. It’s in the DNA.
As far as facing down the dominionists: You seem to have no other M.O. than patiently reminding aaeoni that the true purpose of your faith is not to rule as Caesar does. I don’t expect there is much you can do, but I do urge you to recognize clearly what people like her are after.
If I could fully discharge the anger with which my life experience has imbued me in relation to Christians, I would be attempting what you propose, to undertake a real dialog between believers and atheists. I do not feel confident that I can, face to face, calmly tell someone who I think should know better (but for his paramecium programming) that what he offers, and indeed appears to me to live life as, is a kind of infection.
In the end, as long as what you are “about” is “living Christ’s message”, you are speaking a language whose content I take for nonsense a priori, but whose function is infection. A priori, because it has no relation to anything else I know or observe. What dialog is possible then?
I would not engage you so pointedly if I did not see clearly two things about you. One I have already pointed out to you is your attitude toward Judaism which is quite evidently broadly schizoid (though you yourself might have a hard time recognizing this so far). The other is this fear you express that somebody might be trying somehow to deprive you of the exercise of your worshipful practice. You have brought this up so many times now, that it now appears as a fundamental (no pun intended) anxiety in your emotional life. I don’t think you feel that way at home amongst your brethren. You might like to ponder the source of this anxiety a little.
Well, so far you have called me 1) a turd in a punchbowl; 2) a paramecium; 3) a carrier of infection; and 4) broadly schizoid. If you have any other dehumanizing thoughts, please share them now so I can know what you really think. As you should know, and as Burt has impliedly observed, when you begin to think of someone as non-human, it is very easy to proceed to the next step of elimination (maybe you already did that with the “turd” comment).
I’m really not anxious about it, as you are the only one who uses these types of dehumanizing terms. I came here in part to learn more about atheists, and to see if there is any basis for common ground. There is an “evil atheist” persona, fostered mainly by Grandmother O’Hair a few decades ago, that has impressed itself upon the American Christian psyche. I am in the process of shedding that idea, and in the process I am learning how to communicate with non-believers, something that I don’t get much chance to do in my town. There is a dialectic process going on in my mind, and the synthesis is beginning to form. I’m sure that the process appears clumsy. But underneath it there is good will on my part, for what it’s worth.
I would appreciate more information on what you perceive to be broadly schizoid about my view of Judaism, if you care to do so. If I am a paramecium, at least I want to be a fully integrated one with good mental health - you know, be all that you can be. Maybe I can evolve rapidly.
