There is only one way to understand what someone says, but there are many ways to misunderstand. A misunderstood word can start a war, mostly flame wars. However, sometimes a person dotes over a word as if they were the mother. It's annoying.

Ants are good engineers. As for atheists who have lived before you need to show me a little proof.

It seems to me most Americans are obsessed with the labelling and grouping of people and things. I am not.

This is why I have come to the conclusion that I do not belong with any group. I just want to live my life as I want skipping and singing Disney songs. In all honesty I agree with your sentiments. I never really understood the purpose of trolls or their role in life.

It can be ridiculous to focus on small differences . If you don't believe then that's it

I just find all the things we believe it don't believe interesting. not wrong or right because it is or isnt my experience. But cool to know the person in their entirety and be with it. I love to get to know people and ay in the contrast.

When it comes to trolls, if people are mean spirited, or ha e the need to proselytize their belief or lack of belief, it just doesnt make for a new experience that can add to ours. I call staying in the contrast John Mayer mentions it in "Love Song for no one"
I used to disagree and found I am much more interested in sharing my opinion than others are listening to it.
Ignore trolls, they add nothing to.enhance the dance.

It has occurred to me that belief in gods is one of a number of settings our consciousness is capable of supporting. Heck it can even accommodate our unfailing self approval. But seriously, we know that our conscious minds and the identity we acquire around the exercise of these conscious minds are a product of consciousness. Clearly consciousness has several other plates spinning at the same time; our sense of self is not its only accomplishment.

Does God exist? I'm pretty sure consciousness can support a number of products in addition to ourselves. If one's family and culture expect a God, I'm pretty sure that is doable. Which god? Which ever one(s) are in play in the culture. But what informs the manifestation of that god? Well it certainly has a wider range of material at its disposal than our conscious minds do. In fact, living as we do so much within the role/identity we acquire in these conscious minds there is a natural problem with obtaining the big picture which the totality of our consciousness possesses. The band width of conscious minds is pretty limited. So if the god one believes in is capable of acting as a conduit for that bigger picture which our conscious minds cannot directly access perhaps that is a pretty good work around? That way the organism which we are can benefit from our conscious capacity to think in very focused ways on a specific task while keeping aware of the big picture vicariously through our relationship to our co-product of consciousness which we call god.

Obviously 'God', so conceived may or may not be capable of playing the same connective role which an all-in faith relationship could. Equally obvious is the fact that 'God' would be devoid of omni-powers, would not be a unified being with a separate existence, and certainly would not be in any position to hand out any kind of afterlife. Perhaps seeing through gods in this way destroys their capacity to connect us which the true believers have?

I follow Groucho's philosophy!
I'd never join a group that would accept people like me!

Rene Descartes walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. When he finishes the bartender asks if he would like another. Descartes replies, "I think not" and POOF, he disappears!

I accept anyone in my life that is not destructive to me or my mine. I can tolerate differing philosophies, religions, nationalities, ethnicities, gender identifications or sexual orientations. I draw the line if they insist that I conform to their thinking.

Past lives sound like Scientology. Just finishing Bare Faced Messiah. The story of L Ron Hubbard. Talk about bat shit crazy. Actually Hubbard really sounds a lot like trump.

Thg e definitions come from the subtlety of the use of language. Words very often have three or more meanings. This being the case in debates people use different meanings of the words to manipulate the conversation to confuse the listeners. This ic a common tactic used by apologist. Words sich as agnostic, atheist, and spiritual often have differing meanings to different people. It is a big pain in the butt, but it ia important to often make definitions clear and agreed upon so the opponent remains honest. People like the preacher Matt Powell often use these tactics to claim a "win" in arguments that were never made.

In a complex and technical world definitions are critical. Definitions save you hundreds of words as long as everyone agrees on the definitions, and that's why definitions are defined. Symbiotic, reciprocal, polynomial, etc. In my profession: dependent, reenterable, relocatable, polymorphic, maskable, interrupt, rotational delay, synchronous, bidirectional pairing -- if this list seems long, every one of those gets a chapter in a textbook.

"It has become abundantly clear that people are insanely preoccupied with definitions down to trivial minutia."
When it comes to philosophy, religion, religious philosophy and philosophy of religion, absolutely. All the terms are ambiguous or ill defined and used in different oft conflicting or contradictory ways.
So "what do you mean by that? How are you using term X?" are chronic conditions.

It is like that for a lot of aspects in life as well, and some things like engineering demand that.

The problem with definitions is not that they vary, but that people cherish they usage they favor, and have a hard time letting go of their favored usage rather than try to comprehend something new to them. In some cases in religious thought it can cause a cognitive dissonance, which is emotionally painful.

Immanuel Kant says human reason works that way. It's very nature is to unify ideas. That nature, he says, is what made it impossible for people to come to any other rational conclusion than the concept of a single god. This works great, as you say, in the world of experience when reason finds its expression in its application to nature. Where reason goes wrong, he says, is when it follows its natural course beyond the world of experience and starts getting dogmatic about things it knows nothing about; things like god, the soul and immortality.

Agreed, groups foster inequality, they were all formed as a means of being different for whatever reason. Then the bashing of other groups starts....
the biggest problem are the violent groups, but they all share a common start. To be different, usually starts from disagreements in another group. A new one is started.
There are good groups but most others are control issues...

If I want to have a serious discussion with anyone, defining terms is important to make sure we are discussing the same thing. The risk is that the discussion devolves into nothing more than a debate over definitions, and any opportunity to develop a common perspective to widen the discussion becomes less and less likely the further it goes. How can someone have an intelligent opinion about something if they can't even tell me how they define it?

And then there are the trolls and assholes. You pay your money, you take your chances.

It seems some (most) people have a herd mentality. That don't want to be who they can be, but would rather try to conform to other people's ideas of who they should be.

If you want to clarify something then you turn to a definition. It is however a field of mines which annoys some people because they cannot go there.The cure is to try doing it on something you REALLY want to change. If you succeed in getting a few people to agree with you . I takes millennia to get ALL people to agree with you. That is Humans for you!

There's nothing wrong with making definitions clear and precise, even with social terms and categorizing people.

The problem comes when people think their definition is the right one.

There is no such thing as a right definition or a wrong definition.

If you care about someone, you want to understand them and you want good communication. If someone is trying to tell you something, forget your own definition and use their definition. If you don't know their definition, recognize that you don't know it, and don't just assume your own definition.