The religion is a poem, right? The Great Flood didn't happen, the genocides didn't happen, the "stone unruly children" command didn't happen ... etc. In this non-fundamentalist version, did the Resurrection happen? Is salvation a real thing, or more like the Flood?

It seems an inconvenient question -- or an inconvenient answer -- as to where all the religions, cults, sects, variations, denominations come from. So I'll answer it. It comes from the minds of men ... as poems, as fabrications, as myths, as nut case delusions. If one wants to make the case that there is one true one that doesn't come from such places, then they shouldn't be compelled to avoid the question. An honest answer says, "Religion is a devise of man." There should be no need to avoid that subject unless, unless ... well, that's obvious.

From the OP of this very thread that you have multiple posts in:

I will break it down again especially for you:

1) Reality corresponds with truth
2) We can act more or less in accordance with reality
Therefore (1+2):
3) The moral domain (how we act) is associated with truth.
4) All stories (including religious stories) invoke the moral domain
Therefore (3+4):
5) All stories (including religious stories) fall within the spectrum of truth

You seem to want to argue that religious stories aren’t true by using a very narrow definition of truth (historical fact). I reject your distortion and limitation of truth.

And so I played along with your non-fundamentalist claim of the stories aren't literal, moving it to they are apocryphal and moral lessons but not actual. And somehow, neither one of those is acceptable to the apologist, who, from a position of totally unfounded religiosity, lectures us on what truth is all about.

“… but not actual.”

So, I’ve taken away from you the claim that religious stories aren’t true or real, and now you try to sneak in “not actual”.

Again, how long are you going to put up with this pathetic behavior from yourself?

You are a disgrace to morality in your current version of subterfuge of consciousness to defend and apologize for the appalling ... and the total sacrifice of agency needed to do it. You've been shown that the doctrine is appalling, and instead of admitting that you might have any problem with mass killing, bigotry, misogyny, torture, infringements of decency and human rights ... you just don't have it in you, apparently, in your current zealotry, to say ... "You know, there just might be a problem here." So, instead, it leads to LOL attacks on rationality instead of considering what is right or wrong. Besides, "Who are we to have any idea what is right or wrong? We get that from a supernatural, invisible source instead of by thinking."

I don’t participate in your anti-theistic activism for the same reason I don’t boycott or try to cancel producers of movies which contain violence and other adult themes.

I don’t privilege or discriminate against religious stories over secular movies based on them being categorized as “religious”. I privilege stories which are most true, period.

You are the zealot.

You just keep attacking rationality when the bullshyt doesn't fit it. Then publish the list of other disciplines where we need to suspend rationality in the investigation. Until then, your message is dishonest foolishness.

The rational intellect doesn’t know the soul. The soul is either non-existent or it just becomes another worldly concept, another worldly thing.

Reason cannot connect to love. It can only connect to the approximations and imitations and rationalize that the imitations are real.

Reason gathers 99 worldly things, but it cannot gather the 1 that is real, true, and lost. It relies on deceptions of quantity and kind (why risk the 99 for the 1?)

The Son of Man does not allow himself to be deceived by rationality. Does a groom not know his true bride? And will he not drop everything, including his whole life, without hesitation when he hears his bride call for him?

Am I someone who knows the way? Or am I just like the other 99 so-called truth tellers of the world?

Love isn't irrational or non-rational. The soul is not irrational. The human spirit is not non-rational or supernatural. It just was to ignorant zealots who believed kissing donkeys cured cold symptoms (which they probably "believed" they got from god during prayer). The whole set up of "the important thing is supernatural and non-rational" is just to smuggle in any claim they want.

Love and belonging is one of the basic human needs, and as such is not unnatural or irrational or non-rational. It's fundamental to being human ... no religious tales of murderous, judging, torturing love needed.

Do we tell stories and create movies about the rationalists and their low risk, low reward approach? Or do we prefer stories about heroes who are willing to risk everything and serve a higher purpose than what is rational?

What exactly is irrational or non-rational about heroic acts or qualities?? You are making all this up about non-rational to wedge the supernatural BS in. And you don't realize it ... it's called indoctrination.

The dead don’t know the living and can’t know the living without perishing. Only those who first split from death and come into being can ever know life.

We can use exposure to death and the willpower that comes with it in order to split from death and come into being. Rationality is in opposition to the will.

Rationality tries to put the will to come into being to sleep. Only 1 can have the upper hand. The will must have the upper hand in order to see life.

https://youtu.be/Z1DO7_hHqbw

Only the one who knows the strong man can split and stay split despite the sweet sounds of delusion, reassurance, and rational coherence, which put man to sleep.

Jim Jones, David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, etc.

You will know them by the fruit they produce. Those who follow the God of the dead will produce death.

How many dead bodies are on the record of rationality? How many people throughout history have rationalized to themselves that the death of the body is unavoidable? Billions?

As in ... "No matter what comes at us, no matter the argument, subject, point ... our strategy is to recite doctrine." This of course is the quintessence of indoctrination. Scarcely sensing that they are simply immersed in a worldview, rather than actually appreciating anything wider about reality, they parrot and parrot and parrot it. To the point of delusion ... where rationality is also notably adjourned.

This thread has reached its conclusion. The wise person would train and practice what I have shared here like a competitor trains for an upcoming competition.

FellaGaga:
When it comes to advocating against the dangers of theism, you clearly have put in a dedicated effort. My question is this: If it is fulfilling work that you are doing, shouldn’t you have been rewarded by now? If it’s not fulfilling, but it’s serving truth and justice, shouldn’t serving truth and justice be rewarded?

Not fruitful regarding deluded dogmatists who claim that rationality is to be rejected in order to cling to their beliefs. How could it possibly be productive against that until they are willing to realize what they are doing? I know as well as anyone on earth that beliefs not held for rational reasons are not changed by rational arguments. And that's what your whole thread is about here, isn't it??

You are slaving away, working tirelessly for a cause and you are not being rewarded proportionately for the effort you are putting in. In my eyes, that is unjust.

To dismiss religion wholesale on the basis of this or that individual, this or that church etc. is presumptive and not all that conducive to avoidance of dogmatism.

I, for one, for the 15th time, do not dismiss religion but only the lying arse apologetics that often goes with it. Craig is not doing this per se, that is not lying through his teeth about what I am to protect the doctrine as other apologists on here have done. But the tack of trying to establish the religion by sacrificing rationality is a pure trick, pure bogus. Show me the list of other disciplines which we establish by dissing reason.

People who’ve had any genuine spiritual experience always know that they don’t know. They are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all, in wonder at eternity and depth, and a Love, which is incomprehensible to the mind.

– Richard Rohr