General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's OK to be an atheist [View all]whatthehey
(3,660 posts)Atheists aren't bombing buildings or shooting up concerts in the name of the absence-of-gods. We aren't fighting against equal rights for gays or women because the absence-of-gods likes straight white men the best. We aren't pouring millions into hate crusades because the absence-of-gods suspiciously hates the same people we do. We aren't using our voting supermajority to pass laws forcing masses of unwanted children to be born into lives likely to be beset by poverty and want and brutality because the absence-of-gods can't tell the difference between an embryo and a bus driver. We aren't torturing our own children, often to death, because we think the absence-of-gods will and must cure all medical conditions, or because we think they are possessed by the absence-of-demons, or because we think the absence-of-gods hates the idea of our daughters enjoying sex. We aren't retarding scientific research that could save and improve the lives of millions because we think the absence-of-gods cares what happens to already discarded fetuses. We aren't supporting a huge ring of pedophiles from criminal prosecution by shuffling them off to other jobs, hushing up the victims and withholding evidence from police. And above all we aren't tacitly enabling aqll of the above by equating anybody who complains about the above with religio-crazy bigots like this OP does, or by reacting in shocked aggrieved dismay when anybody points out that believers really can be terrorists, bigots, evil or insane and still be genuine believers. Afer all, no atheist I've ever seen pretends Pol Pot wasn't, at least publicly, one.
But we are indeed sometimes snarky to believers on the internet (it has to be the internet because absent a few celebrities, anybody trying it in real life would be and has been anything from killed to beaten to ostracized to fired to disowned to reviled for trying it). So that makes us just as bad, right?