So, why are we here .. on this forum?

[paulpablo]

What's our mission? Sometimes it seems that some of us feel we are standing watch on a wall to keep the ignorant from over-running us. Some of us like to mix it up, to get over on someone we've decided isn't quite human enough or deserving enough of our respect. If that was my reason it would feel kind of icky. That just isn't the way I want to regard my fellow man and I'm not looking for situations where I can go all dark-side like that.

Personally, I'm always looking for commonality with a theist. Hell if I had reason enough to want to believe in god, from my base position of agnosticism, I could do that. I know I don't know if any deity exists or not. (The truth is I just can't make sense of such a thing.) But if I wanted to believe, if I grew up believing and liked it .. I think I could justify that.

I think lots of atheists over-identify with science. I've chatted with some who seemed to think some ideas were just more 'scientific' to believe than others. (If there isn't a fallacy named for arguments based on that, there should be.) There is a "nothing but" attitude toward anything which can't be tested and backed up with evidence. I don't share it. Evidence? Yeah, as if none of us would ever act on a hunch without it.

Now there are a lot of characters I've come to like and appreciate here. Getting to know you a little, I have some idea how you come to feel and act as you do. I had a benign brush with religion. Easy come, easy go. Some of you didn't get off so easy. If the people charged with my well being when I was young had raped my mind with their religious beliefs, maybe even gotten me to proselytize others .. I would be livid. If folks who've been through that can't use a site like this to process that experience, that would be unfortunate.

Nonetheless I don't think we should celebrate displacing our anger onto strangers as a value to be embraced. It is more like something unfortunate but also unavoidable we have to accept and live with. Let those who need to blow off some steam. But lets not make that what we're about.

I just like to argue with muslims about the things i disagree with about their religion, but at a safe distance. If I did this in my local area I would probably get branded as a racist and get stabbed or something similar.

Stuff like that doesn't happen too much now but riots have happened here, I've seen pakistani muslims attack white people, black people and non muslim indians.

It's strange how it's a religion of peace yet the house just down the road from me has a huge muslim flag on their house with a picture of a huge sharp sword next to the arabic writing.

I don't argue with them based on anger or anything though, just logic I like to think.

I'm really not here to argue with any christians, I haven't taken that religion seriously in about 15 years or so since I was around the age of 12 or something.