Hmm - I'm pretty sure you initially suggested that I'm serving 'the god of greed and power which is the Adversary of truth' which seems hard to square with 'I don't reject everything you say'. Personally I'm happy to be categorised as such but only because it doesn't carry much emotional weight. It just seems that this prejudice precludes really ever understanding anything because you would always seem to have to decide if I was simply telling half truths in order to deceive (the normal modus operandi of the christian devil?)
I never suggested that you serve the god of greed and power, that judgement was reserved for the Watchtower. The fact that you would even consider that I meant you personally means you just don't have a good grasp on who I am or what I believe. Likely becuase you have been distracted by something internally while reading my words over the years. One of those distractions seems to be some sort of complex that you have about being called devilish. To me the devil is nothing more than the collective consciousness of evil. Jesus called Peter Satan if only for an instant. This is because Satan's home is the human ego. Every single human being is susceptible to the seduction of their own ego within a range. I believe when you assert that faith is mind rot that you are being egotistical. But not in the way that makes a man beat his wife, but a more subtle way that is completely transparent to you. The Adversary is "cunning" and therefore many times you are not aware of his presence within you. You are not aware of how he manifests in your life.
There are two opposing forces at work in this world. That of good and that of evil. Good is concerned with the whole while evil is only concerned with the self. There is no other reason besides selfishness as to why someone would wage a war on faith in God itself. The war on the Bible is understandable, the war on God is not. Many who fight for the war on the Bible are of the forces of good, but there are a few who use the conflict to their own personal advantage.
I do find that faith (simple definition - belief sans evidence) is a less effective route to knowledge and I wonder why I ever thought it was a virtue. I do find that faith to be a form of mind rot (i.e. reduces the ability to critically think) because it rejects a fundamental feature of sceptical enquiry (evidence.) Now if you'd like to redefine faith as the hope in something based upon evidence suggested elsewhere I could meet you on common ground (though I'd use the term inference instead) because it is such thinking that allows experiments to be conducted to find phenomenom that haven't been observed (like the Higgs Bosun.) I think religious faith however, isn't backed by an initial set of provable starting points but seems to infinitely regress to itself. Now faith may indeed sometimes get it right by coincidence or heuristic intuition (the Mormon avoidance of tobacco based upon a revelation and adhered to by faith has been found to be right by solid scientific evidence but faith also allowed mormons to be utterly socially racist) but that is correct outcomes from unsound starting points.
You are opperating on the assumption that in order to have faith you require lack of evidence. This is not true and shows a stubborn lack of understanding of how faith works. Faith is inate for some people and you can call these people "chosen." Atheism is a letting go of the hand of God. All atheists have to justify why they let go and how they do this is by explaining that their faith was never there in the first place. They say that faith is actually the suspending of knowledge which it is actually the exact opposite. Faith is the agreement with God that instruction comes from Him. That poses the problem of how that instuction is imparted. That's where faith becomes deeply personal and why it's often misinterpreted as confirmation bias. God wants to be YOUR personal friend, but there is a process of which that comes to be. You have to answer the call and become "chosen." To say that faith is merely the abscence of evidence is an extremely bias and general thing to say and it flies in the face of all the personalized data that exists.
People of faith have a hard time corroborating because it's such a personal experience. Take justmom for example. I can tell her faith is strong and that she wants to help others come to faith. That makes her your enemy because you seek to replace faith with reason. That's why I said EP's questions were a trap because I know his and yours motivations because I have read enough about you to make that assertion.
every theist is atheistic to everyone else's god(s)
This is completely wrong and is based upon your own sterotyping of theism. There are many theists out there that do not believe that their personalized God must be the only means of which God works through humanity. This is the cardinal sin of most organized religion. They don't teach deism along side theism, they just pigeon hole and develop a system of emotional control to abate dissent. You have a lot assumptions, Q, but you stubbornly hold onto them and use them as missiles where they should just be ideas that you are furthering.
-Sab
