@Josephine Because you are an intelligent person and a nurse.

@Josephine Had to check then in case I'd misspelled it

@Josephine I think in some respects yes and in others no. I can understand the laws and theories of science but I have many quibbles and little knowledge of the philosophical thinking and wordage things.

@Matias Citation needed. My tribe generally cited "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" when teaching what faith was. The ONLY time they ever conflated it with "trust" was when justifying it to skeptics.

In any case I would have said that to skeptics back in the day, too, because I had no willingness to admit it was confirmation bias and hope more than actual experience or knowledge. When the religious can demonstrate how their beliefs are distinct from their imagination then we can maybe have a conversation about whether there's intersubjective legitimacy (or any other kind) in connecting religious faith with cause-and-effect experience.

@Matias Nice false equivalency. Money for example is not merely an abstraction that we arbitrarily agree exists, it is an agreed to medium of exchange used for real-world purposes.

God on the other hand has no practical purpose. He's just a shibboleth to signify what religious tribe you belong to. I can find peace of mind, freedom from the dread of death, purpose, meaning, moral conviction, etc just fine without the agreeing to the shared fiction of god. In contrast, just try to leave the store with a loaf of bread without paying for it because you don't believe in money or the government.

@Matias Oh good grief. I've already told you I came OUT OF religion and was deeply involved in it; I'm hardly ignorant of it. I know that religion was in the prescientific era a "sort of OS" for societies and that secular institutions are a recent achievement. That's kind of the whole point. Religion is the past, reason is the future.

And once again you have not addressed my actual points. If I can find peace of mind, freedom from the dread of death, purpose, meaning, and moral conviction without god ... then in what sense is he a necessary entity to either explain my existence or predict outcomes?

@Matias Reread anything I've written and you will not find hostility to a single believer. You will find simple disagreement and the recognition of the human suffering caused directly and indirectly by religious ideation and a certain advocacy for discarding religion as no longer necessary or even particularly useful. That said ... individuals are welcome to knock themselves out if they like being religious. I never said otherwise, and I have religious friends, BTW. Many, many people are wonderful in spite of their religion.

This is the same conflation that many believers have. Fail to affirm and honor their belief-system and they claim persecution and hatred and hostility and, in general, an existential threat. These are just conversations and debates. To those who take up offense on these matters I say, If you can't stand the heat, you can get out of the kitchen. No one is holding a gun to your head to make you be here.

@Matias I have in-laws by prior marriage who are (1) religious and (2) altruistic, kind, and charitable "and so on". I just don't make the mistake of conflating association and cause. In fact, I would say they have transcended religion. This is not hostility, it is simply an observation. Their pastor when I got to know them was an asshat, and when he was replaced by the denominational powers that be with a gasp woman I quickly found out how -- shall we say -- traditional many of my in-law's fellow parishoners were. I won't say passive-aggressive, misogynistic, and machiavellian, because that would be hostile, now, wouldn't it? I mean, we durst not ever call a spade a spade if that spade is a religious spade, right?

Since I've known good people in and out of religion there's no reason to think simplistically of religion as a source of goodness. Can people understand and practice it in a way that promotes goodness? Sure. Can it promote goodness? Sure. Does it have a dark underbelly? More often than not.