Does debating Mormon apologetics make you loopy?

[_Bond...James Bond]

I love it! "The board that must not be named"....

I think I made this comment a while ago....

[_Yoda]

I love it! "The board that must not be named"....

I think I made this comment a while ago....

It's so appropriate to compare MAD to Voldemort on so many levels. ;)

Edited to add----Gives me an idea...Check out the Off Topic section shortly. ;)

[_Runtu]

I love it! "The board that must not be named"....

I think I made this comment a while ago....

I knew I was stealing it from somebody...

[_Jersey Girl]

OK, ongoing loopiness aside...yes it does make me loopy to attempt to engage an apologist especially when you just seem to be getting to the core of a matter and they simply disappear never to respond to it again.

And this is what I don't get about that. If you are someone who is producing apologetic stuff, why WOULDN'T you want to hold it up to challenge? Maybe you got something wrong, maybe your process needs tweaking....wouldn't you want to know that?

[_Blixa]

Debate? I've never gotten that far. Just reading some of the posts on TBTMNBN makes me see stars. Not to mention being filled with a stupor of thought.

(I just read some business over there about a poster finding the "dark spirit" that surrounds some of the posters here to be "palpable." Geez. I still have yet to read anything that comes close to the absolute nadir of humanity I've seen expressed on TBTMNBN by some of the "sweetest" of their characters.)

[Guest]

HAHAHA! :D
OCD?

Nah. No - I mean yes. I think. No. No. That's it, no. Hmm - or should I say yes. OK - I'll say yes. Yeah. I'm sticking with yes. Or perhaps not. No - I'll say no...
Arrrghh! :D

Too bad they can't just hear your Brit accent, RoP!
Then they would just assume that you know what you're talking about.

Only trouble it's not so much 'Queens english' as 'North London'. A bit harder to take seriously :/


I've been thinking about why it is I still bother talking about all this stuff - and very possibly damaging the already weak foundations of my sanity in the process. And for me - I think it comes down to this...
...if religious belief was just a purely 'personal' thing (which it can be for many people), then I really wouldn't care what anybody believed. Truly. Whatever 'does it for you'. That would truly be my attitude.
...but that's not how it works in reality. Religion affects others around you. It affects family. Friends. Others who don't nessesarily belevie in your religion. That's where a line is crossed - for me. And that's why I feel like I should / want to 'speak out'.
And unfortunately, that line is all too easy to cross.

It's not really my intention to literally strip away belief from people (Mainly because I can't). But it is my intention to at least highlight that - it's one thing to say some set of beliefs that perhaps (to put it politely) 'strain credibility' give your life meaning and direction. But it's quite another thing to let that belief - say - make it's way into the framework of a family to the point where a family member literally can't even imagine themselves as 'legitmate' outside of it. Of if that belief ends up affecting your political outlooks - for example.
When beliefs start to affect other people who don't share your outlook, that's when I have a problem. And at no point before.
I think that is the consequence that really keeps me coming back to forums like these.

To me, secularism is about accepting the 'common ground' that is shared between all faiths and world-views. Get a bunch of people with widly differing world-views round a table, and I'm sure we could highlight of all kinds of 'facts' that the people congregated people could and would disagree on. And often passionately so.
BUt there should be at least one thing you - hopefully - should be able to get all the people sitting at that table to agree on:
That the table they are sitting at actually exists. That the real world is real for all of us. And that THAT is, and should be, our 'common ground'.
(I suppose it'd be possible to have one or two who may try and deny the existence of the table in front of them, but usually they are safely locked up in asylums).

Of course, I'm sure many people see my atheism as inherently flawed, inherently 'biased' and inherently damaging in it's own right. And so, I'll argue my case. After all, if limiting yourself to 'secularism' (which is my aim) is seen as inherently flawed, then I have to argue the case as to why:

1. Limiting ones-self to secularism CAN work, and
2. Why letting yourself be tempted to flirt beyond secularism can be damaging, and dangerous.

Ok - I'll stop rambling!

Now - if you'll exuse me, I'm going to go check that my car is locked.
...7 times...

[_The Nehor]

Well, I don't usually debate.. although if one more person at MAD tells me Buddhism is a knock off of Christianity I'm going to freak out!

'

It's not? :)

I'm a little loopy but I was that way since long before Apologetics. I'm told I'm a good, healthy kind of insane by my friends though.

[_moksha]

Loopy? Why do you ask? Has the chipmonk said anything?

[_Yong Xi]

Apologetics is hopeless. So is the critic of Mormon Apologetics. Don't we all know that but continue anyway? We just go in circles.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Sometimes juliann makes me want to scream. Nobody else on these forums has that effect on me. So when all the MADB posters pitch in and agree with everything she's saying, I sometimes wonder if maybe I'm the one who's lost my mind.

Then I come back over here and the world seems right again.