And I am up way too late because I felt a profound need to shout at someone who thinks that all religious beliefs look like a particular subset of Christianity.
I keep forgetting there are people with that little experience of the world. (I can understand that there are people who think that their particular religion is the only good or true one--but not that they don't realize that there are others that differ.) I hope the yelling helped some.
I sympathize as well. It's bizarre when you come across someone who thinks that all religion is like their particular flavour of religion and seem shocked when you bring about an idea that's different. Frighteningly enough, I've met most of the people who fit the category while in college. I thought people were supposed to be exposed to even a teensy bit of the outside world before they're let loose on a college campus.
I believe that for a lot of people, hitting the campus is their first experience of "reality". And many of those spend their first experience of reality drunk, partying, buried in schoolwork, or asleep.
I hope it helped some to at least suggest to this person that diversity exists. I'm not sure I can actually make a dent in the sort of dyed-in-the-wool atheist who has rejected religious practice because it all looks like the sect of Christianity they've rejected, though; I've tried in the past.
And the shouting-at (which you sent me a copy of, and which didn't really seem like shouting at so much as explaining in significant thoroughness) seemed rather well-written, too.
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Yep. Been there, met that, been icily sarcastic to it usually.
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Meh.
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Yay wordcount!
- Brooks