Athiesm is a Faith?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I agree with a lot of what you say FIDEL from your perspective apart from the apologist point, i use my own ideas and words and can be clumsy as a result. Of course my ideas can't be separated entirely from what I have read and digested elsewhere just as a musician does not compose entirely independent of what they have head before. Common sense is a very vague term. whether you take me seriously or not is your choice. As far as an out and out lie that's also false because from my belief system I cannot change anyone's mind so all I do is stimulate discussion in the hope that I may move people to explore their position more and be open to another truth. As far as you are free to ridicule my posts and I expect such but i'm free to respond. I will leave it to every member to decide if what i'm saying is worth the read or not and do what is sensible for them. If what you are saying is that this forum is only open to athiests and anyone else who has an opinion different from this should stop posting or expect ridicule then its a strange forum and if it is the consensus of the forum then I shall depart and leave you to your one handed clap.

I may say, it's not that I don't take you seriously, its your ideas & beliefs (on god etc) that I find lacking.

I'm also not saying that this forum isn't open to theists (we have a lot of theists on here, including mods/admins and regular members).

What I am saying however is that, by virtue of this being a forum that advocates wherever possible a free-thinking and open minded attitude towards any/all ideas (though, to paraphrase Dawkins, not so open our brains fall out), beliefs that we find crazy (and I'm looking at your beliefs on your god specifically here) will be focused on and criticized to the nth degree.

From my own personal experience (emphasis on that), theists that I encounter on an online (atheist) forum fall into two categories:

1. Folk who want to troll/proselytize
2. Folk who actually want to see the other side of the debate/argument.

However, a ubiquitous trait is that, more often than not, they have never had their ideas critiqued or ridiculed. They've always been held aloof from critique, beyond ridicule or analysis. Then they come on here expecting either that we're all nasty atheist trolls who hate them (not true, I don't hate anyone based on their beliefs unless they attempt to force me to believe them) else that we're illogical because we don't see the world that they see in the same way they see it.

Exposure to the other way of thinking is one step to evaluating ones beliefs, which is one way that I think this and other forums contribute well (regardless of what you personally view of it or take away from it).

Theists shouldn't expect us to pussyfoot around their deeply held beliefs simply because their friends/family/religious officials do. That's not how it works.