This Has to Stop

[emjay]

FWIW Astonished, I don't think you're a douche.

Really? I guess I'm not trying hard enough, LOL.

Well put it another way, even if you are being a douche, that comes with the territory of giving it both barrels... you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of thing

I actually find you quite inspiring. I'm not a militant anti-theist by nature... I'm not a militant anything by nature... but sometimes, I think it's only activists that stand between us and a world dominated by religious delusion and all the harm it brings... so from that perspective, when I see raging anti-theists in action... giving it both barrels and not beating around the bush, I'm inspired... and grateful.

I actually found your earlier post inspiring; I wasn't of the mind that simply presenting the material (in a fair and balanced way, albeit unrealistic for parents to actually be able to do so in an unbiased manner) would cause those kinds of problems as outright brainwashing style indoctrination, but you made a good point, and the idea of hell not being a factor in any case at all, that was pretty swell.

Thanks. Well there's a fine line between teaching and indoctrination, and nobody knows where it is, but in my own case it wasn't browbeaten into me but nonetheless I do see it as indoctrination, unwitting as it may have been. If all you do is talk about it, and all your friends are involved in it, your whole social circle is involved with it, that constant exposure, even if it's only incidental as it were, can't fail to make lasting impressions on young minds... as it did with me. So I still have to deal with the emotional baggage of all that even though rationally I'm an atheist; I have beliefs and associated doubts instilled that did not come through reason but are nonetheless there, and shouldn't be because I never gave informed consent for them to be there.

I tend to look at the brainwashed as victims up to a certain point. Once they start becoming agents of the faith and start spreading it like the virus that it is, I can't look at them as victims anymore, I have to see them as threats. It's like people living in the Matrix, I'm okay with them being under that umbrella when we're trying to unplug them but once they get taken over by Smith and start turning others into duplicates of them, fuck 'em.

I share that view, some of the time but not all of the time; sometimes I'm more angry with religion than others.