everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Aiza]

Really, Aiza, you're going to have to provide proof that a single atheist extremist has ever existed. Atheism is not the belief that people who are not atheist are somehow less than you. However, Christianity is precisely that.

Christianity is not "precisely that" at all, Christianity is precisely following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who explicitly called for non-violent approaches, with neither he nor his Apostles killing others while in Ministry. Christianity has fuckall to do with anything except for following the teachings of Christ. Any reasoning you can use to justify the double standard can just as easily be flipped the other way around.

It is easily demonstrable that those with the attitude of "I'm going to kill everyone who is not atheist, if I can get away with it." exist (even more if we replace "kill" with "suppress"). Calling it "atheist extremism" makes sense given the earlier definitions you yourself posited for what differentiates a belief from an "extreme" belief. Perhaps you would have used a different phrase for "I'm going to kill everyone who is not an atheist, if I can get away with it"? What phrase do you think would be better, Shell B? Either way, I don't think calling this particular 20th century phenomenon "atheist extremism" is "intolerant" of atheists or whatever. I'll show you real intolerance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in...st_Albania

Read and pretend that all the religious in this history were atheist and all the atheists were religious. Would you feel intolerant calling it "religious extremism"? Religion itself is "a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values". Meaning "religion" probably has less holding it together than "atheism" does, but somehow I doubt that these atheist blogs would have much of a problem with that phrase.

Answer this, Izzy. What is the difference between Catholicism and a cult?

It depends on what you mean by "cult". If you mean "a system of religious devotion" then there is no real difference, if you mean "a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister", then we aren't really "relatively small" no matter how "strange" or "sinister" you might think we are

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Perhaps you like to think that this is splitting hairs in a silly way because to think otherwise would force you to confront the nastiness of the history of faith and the faithful?

What? Huh? We are talking about the history of atheistic ideologies. The history of "the faithful" (lol what?) hasn't even come up here.

If anything, I think this strange nitpicking and constant double standards are ways that others avoid confronting the nasty history of atheists in the West.

Yes, I am actively opposed to the very idea of god , gods, the godly, etc. How do you propose I go about being in "active opposition" to theism without rejecting the very idea of the godly

What? Because "the godly" refers to "devoutly religious; pious" and not so much to "something I dislike which I can connect somehow to gods in a roundabout way". Good for you that you are actively opposed to everyone who is devoutly religious. But if you start saying Stalin is "godly" because he's powerful and God is powerful to so therefore antitheists also are against Stalin, wellll...no.

Why do you imagine that it would be fair to say that? Your churches body count reads like a demons resume.

Does it really? It pales in comparison to the secular governments of the time.
Either way, we have a 2000 year old history, and one atheist known. That is pretty few and far between.

Bolding mine, misdirection yours.

Um what? Yeah thats some good bolding you did there, Rhythm. Too bad you have no scientific evidence of any NRMs or religious movements using "brainwashing" and your bolding does nothing to change that fact.

Wait..wait, so is there "brainwashing" or isn't there? Bullying is not the only way to manipulate a person, and I;d wager that among all possible ways to manipulate a person, it's the least reliable.

Brainwashing/Mind control refers specifically to unethical forms of manipulation (which are also to the detriment of the individual). It has happened in the past, but the point stands that no one actively converted me to Catholicism: not through bullying and not through more kindly persuasions either.

As for if there is brainwashing at all--its pretty tenuous to say the least. Its a very theoretical sort of concept without a lot of scientific backing, though people who do believe in brainwashing say that's just because the scientific community has blacklisted it.

Godwin.

What. Godwin doesn't mean what you think it does.