aprilstarchild | Now that just warms my atheist heart

sweet! I want one of those shirts.

Yet it says "probably." Which makes it an agnostic bus. ;)

Honestly I'm as annoyed by aspects of the atheist movement (Dawkins and Harris particularly) as I ever have been by fundamentalists.

It's mainly because both sides spend a lot of time telling the other side that they're stupid in some way. They might use different words and techniques, but the sentiment is there - I know better than you.

Regardless of which side is "more right" I find that the approach itself is destructive.

So I would say I tend to identify more with anyone who is in the middle - people who go to church but don't spend their time worrying about whether others do and people who don't believe in god but don't worry about whether others do.

I think that there are legitimate gripes to be made about organized religion interfering in the government and schools, but as long as the separation of church and state is provided for, I have no problem with people expressing their religion.

I almost feel like the more "militant", shall we say, atheist movement fuels religious fundamentalism and vice versa.

I think it ended for me in particular when Sam Harris told The Sun he would rather see all religions end forever than end rape forever.

So while I know that it's unwise to paint all those who share a belief with one brush (all vegans are like PETA, i.e.), Harris and Dawkins piss me off and turn me off of many of these type things.

I just don't see the point. Most of this stuff provokes without achieving any end I can see other than making other people who share the same ideas smile. If you think there is another useful purpose to such t-shirts, bus ads, I am willing to listen, however.

I should also clarify that I do think it is possible to think about these issues deeply and have a profound understanding of science and philosophy yet still hold a belief in a deity and/or deities. It's because faith, when it is faith, has absolutely nothing to do with science.

I have one friend in town, too, who has personally felt very alienated by people who take atheism to the point where they don't respect the religious. He's very smart, very liberal, very kind and he feels he can't talk about his religious beliefs without being mocked.

I don't see how that's better than me being teased by the religious kids in grade school.

I think part of the issue here with you and Jen seems to be over what should or shouldn't be respected here. It seems that for Jen, since there is no way to know for 100% sure whether a god exists, that moves it to the realm of opinion. For you, there is enough evidence that the lack of existence may as well be fact.

While I think it's definitely important to respect people's opinions on things that are a matter of opinion (whether movie X is good, whether you like cusine Y), for me this is not in that realm. I don't feel that I should have to respect the opinion of someone who decides that gravity doesn't exist and that our feet are magnetized, or someone who ignores the MOUNTAINS of evidence for evolution and still chooses to pretend that humans were created as-is, or people who believe that glittery unicorns exist. These are NOT matters of opinion.

Can you imagine what the world would be like if we had to respect everyone's "opinion" even if it flew in the face of scientific knowledge? "Hey, you can't walk across the street there, that's where the endangered Jibbaflob bug is nesting right now! They're invisible! OMG YOU'RE KILLING THEM."

Not to mention the implications this would have for the discipline of history (among others, I'm sure). We can never know EXACTLY what happened in the past, but evidence helps us get as close as possible. If we're throwing out all knowledge that we can't know with 100% certainty and just declaring such problems as matters of individual opinion...well, then, that just sounds really scary for history.

And as to the gay example...

This actually came up the other day on a park bench with a homeless man.

He started in about gay people being a problem. I could have chosen then to end the conversation or judge this person.

But instead I offered my opinion, spoke about my Uncle David in a calm way, and tried not to upset the man I was talking to, but just to listen to him and then he listened to me.

It was quite a civil exchange and when we parted ways, he thanked me for expressing my opinions openly to him about the issue. I don't know if I "changed his mind" per se, but it definitely turned a disagreement and a possible point of alienation into a point of connection.

I think this is possible with all exchanges.

I don't know if I did a good job above with April. I think I got rather too into my arguing. And for that I'm sorry. It's really hard to avoid judgment and the desire to assert rightness is strong, particularly when your evidence is strong. But I really think that often it is more important to reach out to a person with kindness and offer one's opinion non-judgmentally than it is to prove a point.

I've just seen instances where Dawkins and Harris get too caught up in superiority and really divisive statements. I know there are appropriate places for provoking people, but I think it has to be done really carefully and only when nothing else is going to work, and even then, I'm not sure if it does work.

This is more of a "tactics" argument, in other words. Like Vegan Outreach vegans versus PETA vegans.

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