Based on the brief amount of time I've spent on this forum and that I've spent involved in/looking at debates with others concerning matters of religion, faith, metaphysics etc away from this forum, it seems to me that these discussions make no sense since the participants involved don't enter into it with good faith ie. a willingness to be open minded and change one's mind or position if shown to be incorrect. Both believers and non believers alike, including myself, it seems, only want to demonstrate why they're correct and the other person is wrong rather than genuinely wanting to listen to the other side and change one's mind if they're shown to be wrong and so I ask what's the point in discussing and debating if everyone's just out to prove how right they are and how wrong everyone else is? Heck even on this forum, some believers' only purpose seems to be proselytizing or proving that their religion/faith is correct while tearing down any religion that disagrees with their own whereas the purpose of some non believers seems to be to prove that religion is false or God doesn't exist or is imaginary and that anyone who believes any of it is foolish... with all this, one has to wonder what's the point?
It's a fair question...one I think about myself (though it doesn't stop me from being just as guilty).
I cannot answer for the other side (the religious side), but I can say that I have learned from my own experience and from my reading of history (and current events) to be very afraid of all ideologies and strongly held belief systems which do not stand upon evidence or sufficient reason. And I cannot agree that ancient literature (and there's a lot of it informing all sorts of wildly different belief systems) alone stands as a firm basis for reasoning. Any good theorem must be built up from powerfully strong axioms, or from prior theorems (similarly backed) linked by logic and reason.
What I do know is this: from my vantage point in the 21st century, I can say that the Western liberal democracies of Europe, North American (including the US, which for all that it's Republican today is still a "liberal democracy") and Australasia, ordinary people have reached a position in the last 5 centuries which at the beginning of those centuries could only be attained by a tiny, tiny minority of people, namely, aristocrats and senior clergy.
And I know, also, that this enormous change (and it is huge, you would not want to be a common person 500 years ago), was achieved through reason and enlightenment (in "The Enlightenment" sense). And the pushing aside of the dogma and ideologies that caused so much misery.
Ignorance is so much to be feared, and tragically, even today, here on these forums, it bares it's ugly head everywhere. (Remember what Dickens said in A Christmas Carol about the two children at the Ghost of Christmas Present's feet: "This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree; but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."
