*Head desk*

[lil_shepherd]

I have just been told, elsewhere on LJ, that the Gnu atheists (and people like me) are committing low level persecution of theists (and, of course, Christians in particular) by actually daring to state that there is the same lack of evidence for their god as there is for all other supernatural beings.

Persecution? Next it'll be hate speech

Comments

[lukadreaming]

Good.

Poor, delicate little dears seem to overlook the fact that they've persecuted all manner of minority groups for thousands of years. Taste of their own medicine time. Except that it's not persecution but instead a wholly reasonable challenge to their idiotic views.

Paranoid or what? *g*

[lil_shepherd]

I'm afraid my reply started, "Poor liddle theists..." and went on from there. It did not help that this particular person who, unfortunately, I do know personally but very distantly, was trotting out the old accommodationist arguments, and I am rather up on the counters to those, cos I read Ophelia Benson and Jerry Coyne...

[mevennen]

Well, Good Lord! I am a theist - I believe in lots of them. But although there's evidence that satisfies me on a subjective basis, I certainly won't attempt to convince others. There's a lot of Major Group Whinging around at the moment: we're white, rich, Christian and privileged and YOU'RE BEING NASTY TO US!

[lil_shepherd]

I don't seem to have the religious gene - I think it may be something to do with not being able to connect terribly well with my fellow human beings, either. *grin*

I am happy not to try to convert anyone who doesn't try to convert me - and who doesn't want to impose their particular dogma on anyone else. Hence I get on very well with most pagans, and Unitarians, and Quakers, and Deists, come to that. But Christianity has been privileged in Europe and the Americas, just as Islam has been privileged in the Middle East and parts of the Far East, and that privilege is fading here in Western Europe, along with their power base. Reminders of that, and the loss of their standing as the only source of morality and, indeed, any challenge to their beliefs, do not go down too well with many of them.

[steamshovelmama]

That's one of those conversations that you *know* you shouldn't have but occasionally cannot rise above then, after banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall, you remember why you shouldn't...

[lil_shepherd]

What makes it worse is that I avoided reading the post that started it all, because the person who wrote it had turned off comments, and I can't be bothered with that.

However, a mutual atheist friend did read the post, and replied very sensibly on her LJ. This provoked several responses from the original poster, including one that I felt I had to comment on, primarily because the poster was basically telling all atheists to shut up because we might offend someone and, to be fair, that he ought to shut up too, he supposed. That provoked responses from others, including a couple of very interesting arguments - until there came this accusation of persecution.

[blamebrampton]

I'll be sure to stop mentioning that in public the very minute churches stop attempting to influence laws on matters pertaining to science, drug policies and abortion.

[lil_shepherd]

My point exactly.

[blamebrampton]

We should be fine for our lifetimes, at least.

[fredbassett]

What a load of bollocks. It's as much my right of free speech to poke fun and laugh at their absurd beliefs as it is for them to defend them. But they seem to think they have some sort of automatic right to make us respect their silly beliefs, as opposed to their right to hold them, which is not the same thing at all.

[lil_shepherd]

This is the crux of the matter.