Reply #73: What is a concern is the amount of anger and even rage... [View All]

[Tigress DEM]

coming from those who profess to be Atheists at (it seems all Christians) for the behavior of the present day right wing fundies and historical Christian whackjobs.

People who stand by you day in and day out on all these other issues just want a little assurance that rumblings we hear about the kind of things that Atheists "should" do to those crazy Christians is merely venting and not an actual political platform.

I get mad at those who use Christianity against people for any reason too. I've said that if GW were on fire 3 feet in front of me I wouldn't piss on him to put him out. Yet, if someone told me that isn't exactly a Christian thing to say, I'd agree and admit I'm still working on that issue.

I say things like maybe SOD Rumsfeld should spend some time at GitMo experiencing only the torture - I mean interrogation - techniques he approved for detainees. Maybe all the administration who has committed these war crimes should have a room there. But I wouldn't make it a platform. It's a vent of frustration not a plan of action.

Most people don't know any Atheists personally and even when you do, a lot of times deeper subjects don't come up because of how to deal with the language of going deeper when you each have very different ideas of what that is.

So unless someone has been lucky enough to get past that with someone, most Rational Christians who see the abuse heaped on Atheists and not knowing exactly what you do to cope with it, wonder if it's getting to be too much and will create whackjobs - or has. Not you, but theoretically.

What most Christians don't know, and you have been better than most at educating us, is that Atheists aren't generally a whole lot different than most folks. I don't know exactly how you let go of things and move on without God, but I've seen Atheists do it just fine once they made a decision to do so.

And conversations about general ethical behavior comes down to ethics, just leave the motivation out and most things are agreeable.

Sometimes if I discuss deeper things with an Atheist it's like I have my faith as a boat to get where I'm going and I look over I see that person paddling an imaginary boat and looking at me strangely as if they see me the same way. But hey, if we are both getting where we need to go, it just doesn't matter.