The following is my response to mountaineer copied from the forums verbatim. I got quite ticked by his perpetual circular argument

Well, let me sum it all up for you in a nice and not-so-mind-bending package

As human beings, we owe to ourselves to be honest with ourselves and other people. Believing in something without having a slightest justification is an equivalent of lying to yourself. Every human being has a right, I would even say a God given right to lie to themselves; however, that right stops the moment you are trying to tell a lie to another person as if it was truth. That's deception: disgusting, dishonest, and most amoral of all evil things a person can do, for deception is rooted in cowardice and fear - the innate fear that you are wrong and that all your hard effort is in vain and that in the end there is no reward and you will die just like everyone else - lucky if without suffering. Deception is the worst of all evils because it undermines mutual trust, erodes perception of reality, shuns away the truth, and people who engage in all of that typically do not have the balls to admit it.

I am sorry to say that to you, but you do not have any justification for your beliefs other than the Bible, and the Bible does not have any justification for itself other than itself. Whether human beings are prone to faith, or whether the limits of science preclude it from answering questions of spirituality that you seek is completely irrelevant to the fact that in the specific case of Christianity, Christian belief is an instance of self-deception that is propagated to other people by force and indoctrination, against their will, using their intellectual weakness and lack of education in critical thought, and results in opression of these people and especially those surrounding them who did not consent to participate in this lie. Those people happen to be us, and we are not going to stand by and allow it to do to us the same thing it does to you.

I think you feel pretty sad about us heathens not being saved by Christ, but let me reassure that we feel pretty sad about you having had been deprived of choice. Religion is an intellectual rape, and you are its unwilling victim. We are terrified both by watching you getting raped, and by the fact that you defend your rapist. Which is the more humane, which is the more real, and which is more truthful of an emotion is for you to judge on your conscience.

Either way, be well.

DIXI