I should have admitted this long ago, but these forums simply aren't healthy for my mental well-being. Every single time I post here, I end up leaving in a worse mood than when I arrived. It's mainly because there is so much anger, confrontation, and intolerance among the posters here, especially in certain subforums. Of course, not naming any names, but whenever I return to the forums, I dread seeing notifications, because most of the time they're people quoting my posts to tell me things like:
'This verse clearly means X and not Y, and if you disagree you're a heretic who's going to Hell'
'You can't call yourself a Christian if you voted for such-and-such'
'The earth is totally flat, here, watch this 20 hour long youtube video that proves it, and no I don't care about any of your counter arguments'
'I'm still right about this, all of your evidence doesn't count'
etc.
Which brings up another thing. It's impossible to effectively debate anything here, because no matter how much time you spend finding and linking evidence, people are just so set in their opinions that they will never be swayed by it, and just call your sources biased without justifying that (and then expect you to never question any of their sources).
What makes it worse is that my positions often leave me caught in between extremes, so on one hand I have the more fundamentalist and literalist Christians telling me I'm a heretic and that I don't really believe in God's word just because I don't believe the flood covered the entire planet, and on the other hand I have these atheists telling me that I'm a superstitious fool clinging to old myths if I even suggest that the Bible has anything relevant to say about modern culture or science.
It's the same with politics. Some people see me as a communist for supporting the idea of universal healthcare, and others see me as a fascist for suggesting that maybe abortion shouldn't be available to everyone at any time under any circumstances. And there are so many people with so many convoluted conspiracy beliefs that it's impossible to convince them anything they believe might not be true, even though I always try my best to vet my sources.
And then there are the people who openly declare their support for (from my perspective at least) repellent and harmful policies, and spread false information to do that. And often times when they are called on that, they will even say that they don't care if a certain claim is false, if it supports their agenda, they have no problem repeating it.
It's just a stressful and altogether unpleasant experience. I don't feel a sense of community here like I do at my church. I mostly just feel hostility and hate. So I might not be posting here as often as I once did.