How do religious people react to their own arguments?

[Astonished]

Atheist is generally just an insufficient label. It doesn't tell us enough about a person to make any follow-up judgments whatsoever regarding what their beliefs are. It's literally nothing more than opening a cage door. Are they going to close it back on themselves again? Close it behind them as they walk away from the cage? Stay in the cage but leave the door open? Invite others into the cage or scare others away from it? None of those answers are forthcoming under the mere label atheist.

A rational skeptic is an atheist with a tendency to disregard other woo claims along with god concepts, generally, and that's largely what we appear to have on this site, from what I've observed. Show us the proof or shut the fuck up, is the typical attitude and it's useful in the face of the kind of dipshittitude we see from the likes of GC, LR and Lek to name a few. That's the label I identify with and yes, it does entail a dislike of being told what to do because we are, at least for the most part, unwilling to suspend our critical faculties and settle for easy answers. We tend to form alliances selectively rather than just putting aside differences when those differences are irreconcilable or will bring any benefit to a side we know will only do wrong with it, if we're also secular humanists with a consequence-oriented basis for morality.

I think far too many have a 'live and let live' attitude, however. There are far too many on the other side who aren't happy with that and there must be a counter to that. We're already the most reviled minority on earth, so if we're not doing whatever we can to increase our numbers and prevent theirs from increasing (which, fortunately, looks like is going well, with millennials being less religious than previous generations, and unbelief being the fastest growing demographic from what statistics I've been reading) then I honestly don't know what else we can do.

I just view generalizing people in this day and age to be inappropriate. It's a mode of thinking from a bygone era. Not all theists are the same. We don't have the same argument with a different title. We act differently, we think differently and the differences vary from individual to individual and from religion to religion. The label "theist" does not describe a value system, it does not describe the person's belief system about science or the origins of the universe, and it does not describe the person's tolerance toward others with different views. All it says is that the person believes in a deity or deities. Likewise, not every atheist is some foaming at the mouth, angry ex-christian with an unfortunate, persistent christian behavior pattern that they've only repurposed to serve an atheist agenda. The term "atheist" doesn't describe their religious background or even if they were raised in any religion at all. It doesn't speak to their desire to proselytize their values to others. All it says is that the person doesn't believe in a deity.

Had I not joined TTA (and now AF) to meet atheists first hand, I might have formed my opinion about an entire, very diverse population, from the small sample size available on YouTube. I like my ability to be able to agree to disagree on stupid shit like whether there is or isn't a deity and whether that deity gives a shit about you or not. I prefer to focus on commonalities rather than differences. It's more productive anyway.

Well you actually can generalize theists in at least one way, namely that they believe in something irrational, while you can't say the corollary is true for atheists since not believing in a deity doesn't prohibit them believing in other woo and irrational things. And before someone points this out, if someone wants to define their theism in a way that's nebulous and not the traditional definition of a deity, fuck that, it's still irrational.