Hi again POIROT...

I had already ascertained that you're 'good people' POIROT, a biting bark with a soft heart, but in a time of personal crisis, you'd seek relief in prayer, well that stunned me for a while I will freely admit. I can only hope in the future, you're not ever placed in a similar position where personal prayer, is again your only option ? Stay well POIROT.

Though I am not a psychologist I think there is some similarity between the two positions:

“I shall go to heaven, all those who do not share my beliefs will go to hell”

and

“I am an atheist, and all those who believe in the divine or afterlife (however imagined), are irrational”.

At least, both these extreme attitudes seem to come to the foreground as a kind of self-reassurance when some people contemplate (in distinction to experience) closeness of their own death.

I was the only male member of my high school debating team. The other 4 were all daughters of ministers of one Christian denomination or another in our town.

We were a reasonable successful team, although I can't imagine why, at last of the time we were given for preparation was usually spent in these young ladies trying to convert me to one of those denominations or another.

If they could not succeed back then when I was probably much more impressionable & malleable, I doubt anything as minor as approaching death could do it now.

'I have been an atheist since as long as I could reason - certainly before I was 10.'

well Cossomby with any sort of thinking you would realise that their is no common thinking among scientist (except for certain Government funded group thinking) when it comes to design, laws requiring lawmakers, inbuilt moralising of humans etc. Certainly assuming you are more than 21 now you would realise that many scientist believe in a Creator and many are honest enough just to claim to be agnostic. If you just hold to the common pseudo scientific explanations of something from nothing and other evoluntionary garbage you are certainly no thinker but an accepter of (group think) unitelligble garbage. It will get you Government funding and promotion but provide no answers to life.

"There's been no posts about the significance of Kim K's bum at all!" Is it because as a topic it is too big to be adequately probed here?

But to the topic of A&E type Damscene conversions I think my atheism is profoundly thought through so I can't see it happening, but if sufficient quantities of strong enough drugs are prescribed I reserve the right to have a medically induced psychosis.

I don't feel strongly enough about it to criticize what any individual 'needs' to believe in to help them cope with a life-threatening situation. After all is said and done they have to do the coping. We might have to decide how to empathize - and that only if we know them!

Otherwise it is like our ironic reaction to a celebrity death, for example Donna Douglas last week, "Oh, I didn't realize she was still alive."

"I just look on curiously at the fate that becomes me." Agreed. Though my look is a little squinty these days unless I put on my reading glasses.

'If they could not succeed back then when I was probably much more impressionable & malleable, I doubt anything as minor as approaching death could do it now.'

Yea Hasbeen it is true that a peson's heart becomes harder and harder as they age. Thankfully though their is exceptions and hope until the end. One of the thieves on the cross next to Jesus was a good example. He cried for mercy the other just kept mocking as I suspect he had done throughout his life.