Hi there, I was wondering if anyone has had their views change through any of the discussions and debates on these forums? And not necessarily a change in Religion, it could be a change in a particular belief within your religion or you have changed your view about someone else's religion, beliefs or views.
Please feel free to share any changes you've experienced through these forums.
My answer was yes, and by these forums, I mean competing sites as well as RF, where I have many years and thousands of posts of experience beside that acquired on RF.
The greatest changes weren't in point of view - I've learned a lot of factual items here, and learned to identify logical fallacies by name, for example - but my opinion about the damage that organized religion does to individuals formed here. I had already come to see organized religion as a destructive force at a higher level, such as how it damages entire nations and societies, which continues on even now as demonstrated by the last American presidential election and the changes that followed. That comes from the news.
But it is only in a venue like this that one gets the longitudinal exposure to individual believers who can maintain their anonymity and who have no other connections to other forum participants than these discussions that it possible to see just what effect faith based thought and Christian doctrine has on people.
It was in forums like this one that I got to examine the thinking that derives from unjustified belief in the face of contradictory evidence. It was here that I first saw faith based confirmation biases at work, especially among the creationists.
It was also in these forums that I realized the depth of Christian atheophobia - just how much the Christian church demonizes and marginalizes atheists, and how large the fraction of believers that buy into it is. You don't really get that from the news the way you do its homophobia and misogyny.
I also got to see many humanists from the same vantage point, and compare the effects of the two worldviews on those accepting them.
I also came to understand that much nonreligious thinking is also faith based, especially political orientation and views on climate science. It was here that I formulated my present position on the differences in the psychological makeup between liberals and conservatives, and saw the differences in the way that Christianity manifests in liberals and conservatives.
Once again, this only comes from protracted discussions with individuals who feel safe expressing their opinions without the risk of ramifications - something that does not happen much with relatives, neighbors, friends, coworkers and the like. The conversations with such people are necessarily less frank due to the possibility of opinions damaging those relationships, something that matters much less here.
