Evil There are no militant atheists. Hezbollah are militants. No. I hate religion, and always will. I hate religion and I hate those who do not hate it. It is disgusting to want to change *our shared* society based on mental concepts that you can never convince another person of. I have to defend my positions and policy propositions by referring to the real world, but religious people apparently are above such accountability. Repeat after me - the only reason you believe in anything is because your family and community put it inside you when you were a child. Religious faith is not a choice, an on-off switch. It is a resoldering of the limbic system.

Evil Pt.2 When religious people refer to their theologies, they are basically pointing at an eternally closed shed without windows or doors that can definitionally never be breached, and then they say there is an entity living in there that wants us to make gay people miserable/have these kinds of social policies/treat girls this way/follow these virtues etc. That is *disgusting*. By *definition* nothing a religious person believes can *ever* be proven. Yet you dare to subject society to your faith. Yet you *dare* to want courtesy from people like me. You dare to complain about "militants" (lol, pathetic) and rudeness. Try coming out as gay in a religious village in white trash America. Try having an entire high school bullying you because you wanted to take a person of the wrong gender to the prom, with the school board (grown adults) even tries to turn other students against you.

Evil Oh and one more thing - "rational atheist", eh? Yeah, as if there is any other kind. Lol.

Brian People who aren't religious have different opinions on sexuality, its not a religious thing. And no religion teaches people to bully or act cruel to people. So what the f*ck are you talking about?

Evil My view is that if you want to call yourself a Christian, then you have to accept that homophobes and non-secular people (or creationists, society's clowns) will make your faith look worse and make people very adverse and not very soft in their tone. In this case you have some choices: Either actively point to non-secularists and such maniacs and just declare them "non-Christians", break apart and say you have your own and secular faith or just clam up. Don't get all up in my face and complain about rude atheists like Maher or Dawkins. After all, you are a man and an individual. I don't see myself as an "atheist", I don't think I am part of some minority or denomination. If I ever stopped thinking like an individual and started thinking and making decisions based on some minority perspective, I would become intellectually and spiritually null, like Sharpton or the kind of people who think putting black characters in shows make things more "equal" (or the kind of conservatives who blubber about the "liberal media" - people like that never amount to anything). So, basically, if someone attacks your faith then I really really don't think you have a reason to complain about it. If someone said you were a bad person because you were religious then you could complain. But seriously, when people like me or Dawkins rub you the wrong way, we are not actively trying to get you steamed (unless you are a homophobe or creationist - we love to make people like that miserable) - we are just describing what religion is right on the tin and describing what religion does to society.

Brian People who aren't religious have different opinions on sexuality, its not a religious thing. And no religion teaches people to bully or act cruel to people. So what the f*ck are you talking about?

Brian Part of the problem is that there are very few people who are actually homophobes or creationists, they're marginal figures in society, and have almost no power. The Westoboro Baptist church is a circus side show and everybody hates them and speaks out against them. The people who made the Creation Museum are a circus sideshow and everybody laughs at them. Do these people really need to be denounced? Really? Not any more than groups like ELF need to be denounced by anyone who supports environmentalism. Maher has a TV show and Dawkins was a professor. These people wanting to represent Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church is like representing environmentalism by ELF.

Brian Being religious doesn't have a majority, though, really. Church attendance is extremely low; most people only attend on holidays for social purposes. Very few people believe in abstinence, and in fact not having sex is seen by most people as repressive. So people are asked in a poll, if they're a Christian or if they believe in God, and they say yes. But what does that really mean? I think the political debate over this really distorts the issue, and makes it seem like religion controls the sentiments of the country, when it really really doesn't.

Lee Thomas I grew up in a family that never attended church. My grandmother lived with us and she had never attended church for the 70 plus years that she had been alive when moving in with us. My brothers never went to church. My sisters never went to church. I do not recall ever seeing a bible in my home nor can I ever recall any conversations about God, Religion or Christianity. When I was about 10 I was invited to Bible school by a friend. I went. It was fun. I do not remember a thing about it other then sitting in the basement of a church talking about GOD. I think that was my first real thoughts about God. Those thoughts soon disappeared after the week of bible school was over. Fast forward from a family that was devoid of God, Religious talk or spiritual prayers of any type. My brother is now a Pastor. My other brother is a christian. My sister takes my mother to church every week. I am a christian. So in response to Mr. Evil up there. He is wrong. My entire family is living proof that people become religious for reasons other then being taught from cradle to grave.