What do atheists mean when they talk about religion?

[Silent3]

28. Your personal lack of need for proof is the very point I'm making.

That's called faith, and that doesn't taking "twisting" to call that faith. Your dismissal of any need for proof is well in keeping how the religious treat their religious beliefs.

Why would you need consensus? To determine if you are interpreting your experiences correctly. Saying that you now know there are spirits is an interpretation of experience, not experience itself.

If you don't care, you don't care. That's your business. But I call that not caring a form of faith, and it doesn't take any stretching of the meaning of the word "faith" to apply it here.

Why "drag" science into this? Because it's nearly the opposite thing of having faith and taking personal experience at face value.

Yet somehow I don't think you can get past repeating that you know what you've experienced, you know what it means, you don't care what anyone else thinks, you don't care about proving it... and you'll somehow expect that another reiteration of those things should make the issues of faith and semi-religious belief go away, stunned that I don't see it as obvious.