Dear David,

The Nazis only won after getting reinforcements and tanks, and sending Ukrainian troops ahead to absorb most casualties. Someone with true faith is not bothered by oncoming bullets.

"belief" is a shallow, intellectual-only conviction that such-and-such is true. It may withstand endless forum-arguments, but not a single bucket of cold water.
"faith" is a state of being which involves feelings and a level of trust "in your bones" that produces readiness to act and put everything you've got on the line as necessary.

This does not mean that belief is useless or that faith is always good, only that they are two different things which need to be treated separately.

My point is that we need to be accurate in our discussion and be clear what exactly we speak about, just like we do in science and mathematics. Broad slogans like "faith is the enemy of reason" that draw, without proof, general conclusions from one particular example, indicate some personal traumatic aversion, which will only be met by others' opposing personal aversions.

The Hindu tradition combines faith with reason. The faith portion is the trust that one can eventually understand and even attain the knowledge that is being taught, so in the meantime, one ought to do their best to behave accordingly and follow moral codes. Hinduism discourages shallow belief, the Upanishads are full of logic and generations upon generations of Brahmins were encouraged to discuss and reason for and against their contents. Discarding all this just because you are disappointed with Christianity and the bible, does not befit a mathematician's mind.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Chest high treacle.

Goodbye.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I'm sorry for offending you. I really don't enjoy interaction with you. I want these discussions on the net to be a pleasant diversion. If it is not pleasant for me I would rather not bother. In order to have a pleasant discussion we should have an area of agreement and then move into the area where we disagree. I don't understand you. Your worldview is alien to me. From the arguments you make to me it seems to me that I am alien to you. I wish you neither bad nor good. I do not want to make the effort to understand you since I think I can get more pleasure doing other things. I would appreciate you not to try to communicate with me although I cannot stop you. If you do I will try not to answer.

Dear David,

I accept your apology.

Sometimes I enjoy discussing on this forum while at other times I find a discussion unpleasant, but unlike yourself I am not here just for pleasant diversions. Once I commented on an article, I consider it my duty to respond to the responses to my comment (if any). It is not always a pleasant duty as I might perhaps only find the time late at night when I am dead-tired and rather be in bed, but I don't avoid it just because it is unpleasant.

This is especially true when things that I hold dear are being attacked, then I feel the duty to defend them. At times it feels like a burden, but I still find the time to respond.

In this thread you responded to my initial comment (in agreement, which I thank you for), but then introduced a new idea out of the blue: "Faith is the enemy of reason". It was not directly connected to my comment, in fact this was the first time the word "faith" appeared in this thread. Now something that is dear to me was attacked and your response was addressed to me (why?), so liking it or not, I was forced to respond.

To avoid unpleasant interaction in future, if you wish to interject and introduce related ideas to this forum without having to face my opposition and then defend your ideas, then I suggest that you do not address your ideas to me, as if replying to my comment, but rather to the forum in general.

I understand the need to save on the number of posts: it is common to want to reply in short to several participants as well as to introduce a new thought for everyone on the thread. When I want to do this, I place a separator, so it is clear that my response to one participant ended and an unrelated new response to another participant (or to the whole forum) begins. I use a "---" line as separator, but of course you may prefer your own marker.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Sometimes in discussion it is useful to define terms. However, in order to continue the discussion all parties must agree to the definition. You defined faith and belief. I did not agree to your definitions and did not get want to get into a discussion of how I define them. I should have just stopped the discussion then and there. I didn't. Then you wrote of combining faith and reason. To me that is like combining science and superstition. I agree with your point that I should have addressed my comment not to you but to the forum in general and did not. We have very different worldviews, and I don't feel good exploring those differences. I hope this is the end of any interaction between us.