Questions for your Religious friends.

[Mister Agenda]

Arent pagans religious people as well? I will assume by religious people you mean Christians, please correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption. Well, I suppose for the same reasons so many atheists hate Christians. Personally, I don't think hate is the right word to use here. I don't think Christians hate Atheist, I think they just strongly dislike the fact that some Aethesit are extremely condescending and arrogant. Some atheist are very disrespectful towards Christians and mock us and disparage us with unruly remarks. Such as calling us dumb, stupid, ignorant, backwards, bigots, racist, homophobes etc. Many atheist insult God and Christ in so many ways and many Christians find that very off-putting. Some Christians believe that you are trying to take away their faith from them and cause them to be persecuted. Many think that you guys only live to remove God from everything we hold dear to us and value. For example, legalizing abortion. We as Christians are mostly against abortions and when you have atheist call us stupid bigots and misogynist and push for abortions up to full term they feel like you are infringing on their rights and beliefs are when atheists try so hard to remove God from say the dollar or the pledge again they see that as an attack on their faith. Many hold the idea that this country (USA) was founded on Christianity and that atheist are trying to change the fact that this is mostly a Christian nation and has been for centuries and make it into some type of nihilistic dystopia. 

I don't think the question was specifically about Christians, most theistic religions seem more likely to jump on atheists than each other, anecdotally speaking. Regarding legalizing abortion, in the USA the majority of white and black mainline protestants think abortion should be legal in all or most cases: https://www.pewforum.org/religious-lands...-abortion/

This is kinda a hard question to answer though because not all Christians feel this way, but you must understand that not all of us are 4th, 5th, 6th generation Christians not all of us grew up Christian we are not just blindly following our parent's religion and when you make broad generalizations about us and our faith we find that very hurtful. Constantly mocking our God and telling us horrible things about a Being that we truly believe in for example Richard Dawkins famous quote 
 
 “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

You see that doesn't go over so well with us. We find that very hurtful. Now that is what I know from speaking with fellow brothers and sisters.

I've never heard of an atheist who got mad at a Christian for being too forgiving, too kind, too charitable, or too loving. If people (not just atheists) are getting a negative idea of Christianity, it's largely due to the way a significant portion of American Christians act, and it seems to me that anger directed at people who notice that rather than people who are making Christianity look bad is misplaced. Dawkins' representation of God would seem laughable if it was disconnected from how about a quarter of the American Christian population read the Bible (it was more like 40% as recently as the mid-eighties). The same American Christians who largely are comfortable about talking about the gods of other religions being imaginary or demonic. The irony of Christians complaining about Dawkins is that he probably would never have become such an activist if he didn't have to address Creationists and Creationism so often in his biology classes. If Creationists had focused on the science they were there to learn instead of arguing with the professor on the basics, tens of millions fewer people whould ever have heard of Richard Dawkins.

Now let me tell you how I feel about it. It hurts. It really does. I truly love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength I really do and when I see people calling God a fictional character or any one of the things mentioned above it really does hurt me. I understand that you have your own thoughts on Him and thats fine and I can typically take a punch, but then you call me a racist which I am far from it and call me a child abuser because I raise my children in the Christian faith, that hurts because I love my children deeply and do everything in my power to take care of them and provide for them I work hard to be a good dad and husband but when I see this it hurts, but I still try to respect your views and opinions and try not to do the same back. 

I haven't called you a racist or a child abuser, but you're painting me with the same brush, and that hurts my feelers too.

[quote='johndoe122931' pid='2040964' dateline='1622648845']
So you see a lot of it has to do with simply that our feelings are hurt. How else would you like people to respond by being told constantly that they are stupid and dumb etc? It's not easy hearing this stuff over and over, some of us are stronger than others, but we are flesh and blood humans just like everybody else we have feelings and emotions just like you. I know none of you likes hearing those things either so why do it to us? I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

Flesh and blood human beings that say they follow a religion that expects them to 'turn the other cheek'. I've met about an equal number of non-Christians who actually do that as Christians in a country that is majority Christian. You're not asking us to be the same as you, you're asking us to be better than you (you being the sort of Christians I'm talking about). And when it comes to the likelihood we'll gleefully imagine slaughtering Christians, I'd say we are better.

https://forum.samharris.org/?ACT=28&fid=...board_id=1

Now disclaimer. When I say "you" I don't specifically mean you it's a generalization and again I am not saying all atheist do these things but a lot do. I personally just want to get along with everybody and love one another. I don't want to fight and argue I just want us all to be friends and love one another.

Here's the thing. A little lack of nuance is acceptable when you're second-class citizens punching up. You should know you're not the target if you're 'one of the good ones'. The minority shouldn't have to put a disclaimer of 'not all Christians' before every criticism just as a racial minority shouldn't have to remember to include the caveat of 'not all whites' or a woman shouldn't have to say 'not all men'.

It's a little different when you're punching down from a position of being part of a majority that holds nearly all the levers of government power at a group that is only jammed together in the first place because the one opinion we all hold in common is considered threatening by many members of the majority. If you will refrain from overgeneralizing about atheists, I will refrain from assuming you are part of the complaint du jour about Christians. When I complain about Christians, it's nearly always about fundamentalist Christians trying to impose their religon on those who don't share it. I try to be careful about generalizing about racial, ethnic, and religious minorities; and I'm not even in any of those categories. You can do that too.