We need to stop being so aggressive and confrontational...

[Act_of_Reparation]

...you know, because being passive and accommodating has worked out well for us so far.

[Arugula Latte]

1. Clearly making comments on the Internet is on par with burning people at the stake.

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. And calling the things that people believe "stupid" is on par with pogroms...

...genocide, concentration camps, and the like. One necessarily leads to the other... or so I'm told.

[AlbertCat]

6. Just don't draw cartoons...

..... because that's more aggressive than assassination!

[Arugula Latte]

20. Right! If you insult the Religion of Peace

you've got it coming, Buddy!

[trotsky]

10. It also scares millions of people away from the Democratic Party...

and makes them vote Republican. I'm sure it does, because, well, somebody said it does.

[onager]

16. Yep. And never let it be forgot...

We only hate religious people because it's no longer fashionable for us to hate gays and racial minorities.

So non-believers are basically a bunch of undead Strom Thurmonds with Internet access.

[trotsky]

18. How could we forget that, since it's what we all believe?

I am so thankful to that poster for pointing it out. Really cool. Oh wait, did I say cool? I meant hateful and ignorant and prejudiced and stupid. Sorry about that.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Oh never mind us. We are just a small group of haterz.

All the good atheists are busy going to church and being religious so that nobody feels bad.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. That is actually surprisingly true.

[Act_of_Reparation]

12. Even fundie programs churn out the occasional skeptic.

Both Bart Ehrmann and Robert Price both went into seminary as Evangelicals. Ehrmann's now "agnostic" and Price is a fire-breathing atheist.

Knowing what we know about the Bible, it has to be incredibly difficult to study the textual history of the book at a scholarly level and maintain the illusion that the Christian religion is a legitimate revelation from God. Just studying the history of the Early Christian church should poke more than a few holes in a person's faith.

[AlbertCat]

7. Daniel Dennett, with Linda LaScola, did a book about that....

"Caught in the Pulpit"

http://www.amazon.com/Caught-Pulpit-Leaving-Belief-Behind/dp/0615927904/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422038799&sr=1-7&keywords=daniel+dennett+books

[Curmudgeoness]

11. If we aren't, who will be?

Who will stand up against religion seeping into all aspects of our lives?

I am only surprised that so many people who are not the few but vocal fundamentalist evangelicals are not just as upset as we are.

[beam me up scottie]

14. They say the same thing to uppity women, lgbt/black people and other minorities.

Sit down and shut up or we'll throw you under the bus.

And then every election season they chuck the properly deferential under there with the rest of us anyway.

Fuck that, I'm going down fighting.

[Act_of_Reparation]

15. "You can stand up for yourself, but gosh, you need to be nice about it..."

"...if you criticize people, they shut down."

Like these people aren't shut down already. Like we were making a lot of progress all those years ago when we were content to remain invisible.

Fuck that noise. I'm with you: I'm going down with my boots on.

[beam me up scottie]

19. Exactly.

"I'm no longer an atheist who says you believe your way and I'll believe mine. For we have come to see the full and true face of religion in these three years, emotional and psychological reprisals were taken against us, physical assaults were made against us, economic sanctions were taken against us, the order for instance to fire me was issued just twenty four hours after I filed the appeal in the US supreme court and no one will ever convince me that it was sheer coincidence I lost my job then, and in the circumstances that occurred.

We have found that religion is a vicious hate ridden thing, that it is perhaps the most evil thing in America today when it is rawly and openly exposed to the persons who fight it. We carried our battle above board legally and the religionists carried on their battle in a dirty underhanded warfare. I am proud to be an atheist now, a fighting atheist, a militant atheist."

-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair

[F4lconF16]

23. I'm coming with you.

And I'm going down hard.

[LiberalAndProud]

17. Oh, nevermind.

I have retreated into my delusion of intellectual superiority.

[mr blur]

21. Sorry, aggressive and confrontational is what comes out when I'm presented with

irrational, smug and ignorant.

What can I do? I blame the pope.

[Act_of_Reparation]

24. It reminds of me of a Mark Twain quote:

"A man who picks a cat up by the tail learns a lesson he can learn no other way."

I like to think we're cats. Though, I suppose the same would apply with goats.

[F4lconF16]

22. Listened to a whole bunch of fantastic

youth and other speakers at a community panel featuring John Carlos last night. It was a panel discussing racism and activism, and you know what? Not once did any of them say, "It's time to be nice and ask politely for what we want". Nope. That's a bunch of crap. They've been doing that for 200 years now and they're still not free. They said agitation was the key. Get in people's faces, make them aware of the issues, piss them off. Just don't let them sit there doing their thing while others suffer.

This may have been referring to racism, but it's a good idea for activism in general.

[Lordquinton]

25. "Well behaved women seldom make history"

Kinda a hard counter to the "Just be nice" meme some are spouting.

[Iggo]

26. Fuck tone.