The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians

[Drich]

I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of the "angry atheist" ever since my arrival here in the forum. I expected and hoped to engage in intelligent discussion of our differences of opinion with the so-called "brights" of our society, but more often than not, I have been the recipient of a lot of misdirected venom.

And I'm not alone, apparently.

In this article posted at Dave Armstrong's blog, Jan Tik describes his own experiences with the angry atheists he has encountered and writes:

The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians
by Jan Tik
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstro...tians.html

But if one takes a look at just about any active combox underneath an atheist post that has anything at all to do with Christianity, the usual boorish, garden variety collection of insults will be immediately observed:

Christians are gullible, infantile believers of fairy tales on the level of unicorns, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, the Easter bunny, leprechauns, “magic,” the tooth fairy, etc. We are  anti-intellectual, anti-science, dumb, stupid, idiots, ignoramuses, and imbeciles who are impervious to evidence of any kind for our beliefs. We have a blind faith that is shielded from reason, fact, and any possible falsifiability. You name it: we’ve been called it by the sadly typical “angry / hostile” atheist.

Any curious human being, it seems to me, who observes this behavior, must marvel at both its near-universality and the extreme level of passion and vitriol involved. The question arises: “whence derives such utter disdain and derision?” It appears to be a species of a mentality that is brought to mind by the famous line of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks“. Source.

As I have observed and commented upon in this forum, Tik also notes:

The same people who produce the endless stream of invective against Christians and Christianity (or, “Christianity”) can (again, like all schoolyard bullies) dish it out but can’t take it. Any criticism back is met with even more highly insulting rhetoric and hyper-polemics.

Happily, there are a few members of this forum who do not fall into this pattern, but they are all too few, IMO.

That last quote is Soooooooooo True.

Even a broken clock is right 2 times a day. When and if on the off chance it is one of those times for me, and I graciously carfully measure back the same level of contempt shown me, people here loose their minds! Or I never/seldom hear from the ever again which means I've probably been put on an ignore list. (something I have never done.)

Which is not a all bad thing. why? because it tempers the yappy dogs who just like to make distracting noise in the back ground. it keeps the topic snipers at bay till I'm well past being done offering constructive to a given topic, and it defangs the big dogs so when they do bite, it does not hurt all that bad. clearing a path to those who want to have a honest discussion about a given Christian topic.

The only draw back is leaving before or not hitting back as hard as one is trying to hit you. I tried to live and let live a long time ago, but far too many times my kindness was mistaken as weakness and my message was more often than not was over run by the yappers and snipers/red herring-ists.