The difficulties of cross cultural communication.

[cbayer]

43. This is a common refrain with which I take issue.

If someone thanks god when something good happens that does not necessarily mean that they think god made it happen. Perhaps they just feel like they had some good fortune and want to thank their god for the opportunity to live another day or just say how appreciative they are that they have the chance to spend more time on this beautiful earth they feel was provided to them by their god in some way.

The easy, but very erroneous, argument is that if they do that, they are hypocritical because they only give their god credit for the good things and not responsibility for the bad.

Or perhaps they do think god is directly responsible for the good things and the bad things, but they curse their god for the bad things in private.

There is always this gotcha game where some try to corner a person into saying that what they believe is bullshit. Belief and faith are not logical and attempts to destroy them with logic is tilting at windmills. Your "reason and critical" thing are pieces of wet spaghetti when it comes to religious beliefs.

You may feel you have won, but all you have really accomplished is making yourself feel smarter than them. You are not smarter, you just feel smarter.

Congrats.