My argument for atheism +

[EgoDeath]

The term 'Christianity' is basically the glaze on thousands of different religions with varying thicknesses of the glaze in common. Most generalizations about them are going to be over generalizations, it's just the nature of the beast. No matter what you say about Christians, someone else will be able to say 'not all Christians'. Of course not all Christians, it's vapid to insinuate that the person who made an observation about Christians was talking about 100% of them. For the sake of brevity and communication, it should be taken as read that a comment about Christians in general, while it may apply to millions of Christians, does not apply to all of them. If I complain about Christians who try to get ID taught in science classes; I'm not complaining about the Christians who aren't doing that. If I say Christians believe in demonic possession, I'm not talking about the Christians that don't. If I complain that white people get special privileges in America that people of color don't get, I'm not talking about the poorest white people in Appalachia. Knowing when to chime in about 'not all X' and when not to is part of reading comprehension.

That's sort of the issue though... it's so obvious it doesn't need to be said. I had this disagreement with another user in a thread about book recommendations; I told the OP in that thread not to bother reading a certain book, and then recommended a selection of books. Another user told me, "It's up to the OP to decide what they want of read..."

My response was basically, "Um... yeah... obviously."

There are certain unspoken things that we shouldn't need to spell out for one another, but "shouldn't" is the key word there. It's not an ideal world, is it?

Unfortunately, it seems that when Bel likes to remind everyone, "not all Christians," it comes off more as a chance to correct someone than it is a chance to have a deeper, more nuanced conversation about what Christianity is. It is also usually largely unnecessary to clarify, "not all Christians." It's just not needed. If I say, "Christians think that hell is X, Y and Z." You could chime in with, "not ALL Christians believe in hell! Actually, many sects of Christianity think that..." I mean, sure, you're technically correct, but it just sort of seems unnecessary to point that out.