Reflections of a stormy petrel

To be frank, it is as much a matter of life experience vs. lack thereof. There is one highly intelligent person, a scholar to boot, whom I will have to metaphorically take by hand and guide over the ABC, because she has simply never met anyone like me before, and all her life has obviously been spent among like-minded people. I find it tragic to see so intelligent and sensitive a person simply repeating the cliches that I was mouthing at twenty or so, but then, she is probably the same age now. Other than that, yes, of course there is a difference between Christians like lametiger and eliskimo, well-meaning agnostics such as privatemaladict, and conscious atheists such as curia_regis; however, my impression is that the issues that have been raised are not so much to do with my analysis - especially after the second post - as much as with side issues. And I am frankly delighted with the way everyone has been dealing with issues rather than trying to shoot the messenger. The tone this discussion has kept is a credit, not to me, but at least to my taste in online friends.