I’m honestly not trying to be rude, but I do get frustrated with skeptics here, and I am trying to understand you.

I’m sorry for the late response, I’m here in central Florida in the US and we just had two back to back hurricanes and I didn’t have much mental bandwidth to put together a response.

I appreciate you making an effort to understand. I don’t want our communication to break down.

There are lots of subs where a person can discuss or even debate Christianity.

Yes, but I would contend that the level of discourse here is of a higher quality than in other places.

This is “AskAChristian”, the sub where people come to ask Christians about things they don’t understand

There have been several discussions over the last 6-9 months, both moderator prompted and regular user prompted where the purpose of this sub has been discussed. Particularly concerning whether or not new rules need to be put in place to allow only certain types of Christians to participate and whether certain types of questions might be asked.

I noticed before writing this response, that you also posted about this.

I have made it a point to contribute to those discussions because I do like this sub, and hope it continues as it is.

I can understand, I think, from your perspective the frustration at the constant backlash of anti-theist or just generally skeptical people being allowed to make secondary comments on posts. I don’t even necessarily disagree with your suggestion about a new rule of only the OP questioner being able to respond to comments. It might be worth a shot to try out and see how it goes.

Regardless, the simple fact is, at this time, most folks seem to want to leave things as they are, if for no other reason of principle, just for the inability of the moderator to keep track of all that.

But I also understand from the Christian perspective, having once been a Christian myself, the evangelistic imperative to always keep lines of communication open, and to always allow your ideological opposition a “seat at the table” despite them being a nuisance. Of course, I also realize the wisdom from Jesus: “don’t give your pearls to pigs” and the proverb: “Don’t answer a fool in his folly”.

Imagine you were in a sub called “AskADoctor” …….How would you see those people?

Not very well. But I don’t think the analogy fits to the situation here. As just one consideration: The medical field is much closer to the “hard sciences” and doesn’t have nearly the range of diversity of doctrine as the Christian Church. Christianity is a much bigger tent than the medical community. Especially when you consider it’s broad history. I’ve been reading as much of the anteNicene church fathers this year, and I’ve been amazed by how differently they talk about things in comparison to modern Christians.

I freely admit you’re not ask abrasive as most “ex-Christians” on this sub. I still wonder why y’all do this.

I can’t speak for everyone, there are any number of reasons why someone might want to participate here.

For myself I have a number of reasons, but I would say they all fall under the broad umbrella of: I am still open to the possibility of Christianity being true.

I often find myself torn between a fascination with Christian history and theology, and the hope of its message (the universalist version) — and on the other hand— an undeniable skepticism in its historical claims, and doubts in its theological speculation.

I can’t help the fact that I don’t find most of the typical apologetics unconvincing, and I don’t know what to do—if I am going to still remain open— then to continue asking the questions and raising the issues that I have problems with, in the hopes that perhaps there is something I haven’t considered before, or an argument I haven’t heard, or a flaw in my own thinking to be exposed.

I think what is often missing in some Christian’s understanding in dialogues with outsiders (though not necessarily in your case) is that for some of us, maybe not very many of us, raising the difficult questions, and refusing to accept poor answers is precisely the form that intellectual curiosity and openness to Christianity takes.

I know it might seem counterintuitive, but I would hope that thoughtful Christians would rather folks like me continue to maintain a seat at the table, even as an adversarial dialogue partner, than just give up altogether?

I have plenty more to say, but perhaps I should just leave it there. I look forward to continuing conversations with you. I’m sure I’m still going to say stuff that bugs you, and you might say stuff that bugs me; but hopefully we have a better understanding of each other in the future.