I think the problem is that many religious people have experience talking with atheists end up talking to the zealot who insults and demeans their beliefs.

Or perhaps being challenged or held accouontable for repugnant opinions stemming from their religious beliefs.

An example: minding my own business, eating lunch at a great local tap, a firefighter from the station next door was commenting on waterboarding, and what a non-issue it was, and doing whatever it takes to get the bad guy, etc. He wasn’t talking directly to me but it was obvious he didn’t expect any disagreement in the room.

Politely, calmly, and in a civil tone, I called him out on his bullshit.

Some might call that liberal zealotry; I call it gentle public embarassment to, in some small way, keep my country from sliding further into an abyss of cruelty and groupthink.

The conversation stayed civil, if uncomfortable. I didn’t engage him to convince him I was right; I engaged publicly to show him and others that there’s an opposing view, and maybe shame into keeping horrible ideas like that to himself, going forward.

And so it goes with religious bullshit. If religious belief didn’t hold such a privileged position in our culture, there would be more criticism of bad ideas and repugnant opinions. As it is however, there’s a serious stigma and even tangible consequences to calling out this bullshit. Therein lies the topic – keeping silent to keep the peace.

I don’t have your experiences so I can’t judge whether you’re surrounded by asshole atheists or the religious people you know expect to not be challenged when they say stupid things. Hell, those aren’t even mutually exclusive. I will conjecture that a lot of religious people will take personal offense at having the whole notion of faith (accepting claims without evidence) challenged; it’s something that makes them happy, and they’d rather be happy than think about whether what they believe makes any sense. And as has been said in other threads, not having one’s bad ideas and repugnant opinions actively agreed with may well cause offense to the religious too.

In the current climate, atheists can’t win no matter how they behave, but sadly, I believe that’s always been the case. The religious usually expect carte blanche and most of the time they get it.

The only evangelistic christian I got to know is now a genuine member of the Atheist blogging community… right, so on to that ‘how are things now in propagandaland topic’.

You are apparently unaware of the fact that organized protests are called organized protests because there is a playbook. There are procedures, objectives, limits, etc. Some of the code pink protests involved small numbers of individuals going into congressional meetings, yelling, and getting arrested. To my knowledge there was not an effort to shut down several different public town hall meetings. If there were, I’m wrong, you document, I’ll allow you to keep commenting even without apologizing for the feeble mind remark. Otherwise I might shut you down and silence your voice so you know how that feels.

You have one hour to produce documentation proving that Code Pink used the same tactics that these friends of yours are using, or to withdraw your statement. Please include documentation of the code pink ladies beating up people that disagree with them, as well ad documentation of code pink ladies hanging members of congress in effigy, along wiht your documentation of systematically closing down several town meetings.

I’m looking at my watch and counting.

60 minutes…
59 minutes and 59 seconds…
59 minutes and 58 seconds…

“Being religious is normal. Being religiou provides privileges in our society. In fact, not being religious is what requires the explanation!”

Just an FYI

No there isn’t. You may have convinced your own feeble mind that there is through some selective amnesia, but this is the exact same shit that went down during the Iraq War debates with the parties reversed.

You can believe it, just like you can believe that I defended Code Pink for much of the same stuff. When the other side is in charge dissent is patriotic, when you’re guy’s in charge, its unacceptable. Read you loud and clear.

Stephanie Z,

On second inspection, the post calling the protestors brownshits was authored by someone else – I assumed that you were the author since you were the one defending it in comments. I stand corrected in that regard as you were not responsible for lowering the tone of the debate to that level.