Joe Offer sez: "Wouldn't it be wonderful to see a discussion among a number of people who are able to see the issue from a variety of perspectives?

"Why is it that we have to choose only one perspective? If we could see things through the eyes of many others, as well as through our own eyes, would be come closer to a true perspective of things?"

Did you read my post on the "militant atheism..." thread? It's disappointing that you don't at least credit me a little for wanting to see others' points of view. But I do reserve the right to dismiss the views of those believers who believe, eyes shut, in the certainty of their cause, still worse want to shout it as truth to the world, and there are plenty of 'em. My whole argument is predicated on the lack of certainty which everyone, believer or atheist, must acknowledge before we can have a proper conversation. You happen to be one such (if there are others of faith in these threads like that, they are hiding it) and Giles Fraser, one of the very few believers I admire for the way they express their faith, is another. Here's the post again.

"I suppose I could have posted this in one of the Maggie threads, but it contains much that is relevant here. I apologise for my lack of ability to do proper links on this website. You'll just have to copy and paste.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/apr/12/margaret-thatcher-doubt-wimps-human

Giles Fraser, a man of the cloth par excellence, is one of the very few believers who consistently expresses his beliefs in a way I can truly respect. This is an excellent article, scathing about Thatcher's apparent religious certainties and explicit about how true faith cannot have certainties. An awful lot of religion's millions of proselytisers could learn much from him. Here's an excoriating analysis of Thatcher faith, and, unfortunately, it's a brand of faith that is all too common and which is grist to the mill of the Dawkinses (and Shaws, Jack) of this world:

For her, Christianity was all about being on the side of what is right. It was a moralistic version of Christianity that, when crossed with a Samuel Smiles philosophy of self-help, would inoculate her against doubt and criticism. Thus she wore her indifference to objection as a badge of pride. That was what she meant by faith.

And how about this for a novel and focussed definition of faith that will prickle a believer or two:

But what she never appreciated was that faith is fundamentally bound up with doubt. Faith strains to imagine a world so much more expansive than the measure of our own minds and convictions. This is why faith is always a certain sort of loss, the failure to comprehend things in their totality. Faith is the confession of a failed atheism, the suspicion of a constant remainder to the neat equations of life. It begins with an ineradicable "I do not know", continually straining to make raids into this unknowable, continually returning with the wisdom gained by another fresh defeat.

But read the thing. It isn't long, and I have no wish to be accused of quoting out of context."