> Sam, your reasoning on this point is circular. It doesn't make sense until you assume (believe) the existence of the Christian God as fact, and after that it's trivial to say that Christianity is a state of being rather than a state of belief.
> ... As a student of logic, I took this sort of thing as an insult to my intelligence, and it gave me the impression that Christians try to misuse logic to prove their religion by tacitly assuming the existence of their God.

commiebat, I would not have thought it possible to miss something so completely. There's nothing circular about anything I've said in this thread. There would be if I tried to prove God exists by assuming God exists, but I am NOT trying to prove any such thing with these comments! I mean, really, where do you get a "therefore, God exists" out of anything I've posted in this conversation so far?

What you seem to have a problem with is that Christians get to define what Christianity is, but isn't that what makes sense? Would it make sense for me to define what atheism is?

I have unapologetically made the implicit assumption that God exists in my statements, because that is who I am and the kind of discussion knivetsil was *asking* for. My conclusions have been quite reasonable, non-circular statements about spiritual identities and personal recommendations to knivetsil about where he might go from here. We can argue, if we must, about the advisability of these opinions, but to bicker about their logical soundness as opinions is singularly unproductive, not to mention, frankly, irritating.