First off, although spiritual, I have no religion - it works for me…
I have lurked here many years, and there seems to be a rule:
“Any one found to have started a Thread entitled “Ask the (name of Religion)” **MUST ** first PROVE themself a (name of Religion)”
In some cases, I’d be downright shocked if the challange wasn’t postd within 10 minutes of the OP (the “Ask the Jew” had an ENORMOUS bullseye on it :D)
Mormons, yeah, expected - anybody who has to do a password/counter-sign to get into the building can be counted on to be touchy.
But Buddhist?! Come on, isn’t the point of the Dharmic religions that there can’t be membership cards?
So - is there a religion which, should a well-meaning moron insist that I simply MUST have some religion, I can call myself without being challanged?
I think it comes from the type of board this is. Since the stated goal is to “fight ignorance”, we attract the skeptics who know not to take ignorant talk at face value.
I don’t particularly like it, because I was raised to take unprovable statements at face value, but it seems to be the norm. I just can’t figure out how you’re supposed to have meaningful conversation if you constantly assume the other person is likely lying.
I guess it’s just that when someone’s world view amounts to “Moonhampster Rembrandt Pussyhorse! Here, I have 10 000 books to prove it!”, it’s kind of hard not to ask if they were born like that.
I thought this was going to be about challenging the basis of the religion, such as “Please show proof of the existence of the god your religion worships”. Never mind.
In my opinion some people enjoy arguing more than learning. And that does make the conversation more interesting, although it also causes unnecessary defensiveness.