Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:01:11 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> Sure, there are "nice" people, who don't fall into that category. Sort
>> of...
> 
> You really need to meet more people - if your sample is so small that you 
> believe that all believers aren't nice (etc.), then you don't have a 
> sufficiently large sample size to understand the POV of someone who does 
> believe.
> 
> I live in Utah.  I have many friends who are true believers.  They've 
> helped me move house, they understand that I don't believe what they do, 
> and they don't try to convince me that I'm wrong.
> 
Try doing something that "really" conflicts with their views in some way 
though. Reality is, there is almost always "something" that will set 
them against you, if you cross some undefined, imaginary, line. The ones 
that don't.. Are usually a hairs breadth from being "basically" 
agnostics, or UU members. I.e., they either follow the religion because 
they "hope" its meaningful, and its become habit, or they have a view of 
religion that is so nebulous that they would rather just leap to the 
conclusion that you are good, therefor following god, even if you don't 
know you are, and thus "saved" anyway. Nice ones are wishy washy in 
views, either about the religion itself, or if not that, then as to 
their "interpretation" of who is "really" following it. The minor 
exception is a few that think being nice to everyone is "mandated", but 
still share, among themselves, the certainty that you, being a 
non-believer, are in deep shit later.

The problem with these later groups is that they invariably have "some" 
members who, if they didn't have a more aggressive and nasty group to 
join, would feel the need to "invent" one, so they could teach the 
"proper" lessons, unlike their parents, which means "not being nice". 
You can't hold to a religion that contains the "seeds" for such 
practice, and plenty of examples, and not expect recidivism to a nastier 
version on occasion.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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