RE: I'm Atheist.
June 20, 2011 at 6:59 am
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2011 at 7:08 am by Anymouse.)
Welcome aboard (if you can be aboard an Internet forum, as if it were a ship).
The folk are quite friendly around here, regardless of your particular religious viewpoint. The only time I have really seen the regular users get nasty (not trolls who log in, post, and leave) are when someone makes an attack on a person.
Although (from my somewhat limited perspective) the discussion can get quite heated, the attacks are never "to the person," unless someone attacks that way.
No friends? I thought that was my sole claim to individuality. I was generally of the opinion (my wife excepted) that the atheists, and to a lesser extent the agnostics, would dislike me because of my religious position; the Christians would use me for fuel for a marshmallow roast (see religious position under my avatar).
Actually though, they mostly seem to be decent folk here, like most folk in general. The atheists have never attacked me personally (nor my positions for the most part), the Christian theists haven't called for a witch-burning, the other theists don't seem to care much, and the agnostics just don't know for sure.
Back in the ancient 1980's I ran a Wiccan/pagan bulletin board service on my Commodore 64 in Virginia Beach, the hometown of Rev. Pat Robertson. I made the mistake of allowing a minor from Newport News to join the forum. After his parents found out, they threatened to sue me. Didn't matter that it wasn't illegal; as I would have had to hire a lawyer on a sailor's pay and defend myself in court while deployed, I had to instead take the bulletin board underground, and kick him off. Standing up for your beliefs is one thing, and a religious person or atheist person here will do a lot of both, but putting a pile of money into a lawsuit was beyond me then. (It is now, too. It is nice to say "stand up for your beliefs" when you don't have to pay for it.)
On this forum, they will not attack you for age, or your belief. They may attack a particular position you hold, particularly if you hold forth it is "The Truth" and cannot back it up with evidence, but I have never seen a personal attack here unless the fool in question deserved it.
Much friendlier than another atheist forum I was recently a member of; that place the membership goes in for personal attacks rather than rational (or even irrational) discussion. I wouldn't recommend it.
James.
Done watching season four of "Little Mosque on the Prairie" from the CBC. A really good show. Why can't we have such TV like that in the States? Fox bought the rights to air it here, so they could bury it and prevent it from being broadcast - why do religious fundamentalists here let an Australian billionaire tell them what to think?
"Be ye not lost amongst Precept of Order." - Book of Uterus, 1:5, "Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her."
