There is a piece in New Scientist today about some research carried out in America on how people perceive the ideas held by God as compared with those they have themselves, those held by other Americans and a few other groups. These ideas were selected from a variety of topics, but I expect you can guess which ones.

What happened was that it turned out that those researched felt that God had the same opinions they did, while these might diverge from those held by the other groups.

The researchers then asked the subjects to develop an argument in favour of the opposite view from that they held themselves, for instance on the death penalty. They found that the subjects tendeed to change their own view on the subject, but also believed that God's opinion was different, while that they attributed to others had not changed.

Which means that, unless it is possible to get the proponents of the death penalty to argue against it, there isn't a hope in the hot place of getting them to accept that God does not want death for his children, or that they are not the real Christians.

They will see those who oppose them as the not Christians.

Penny