How can Christians and Atheist respect each other's beliefs?

[Hezekiah]

Haha! Fair enough The realist in me says that something like this is very unlikely, but its fun to engage the idea.

I will say that a persons worldview, in my eyes, doesn't reflect who they are, but rather what they stand for. I'm a bit of a humanist in loose terms, and I would like to think that a person could be valued seperate from their perspective on the world.

You'd like it if people gave your christianity a pass - in short? Granted. It's provisional, of course. Get too christian on me and I'm going to feed you to the pigs.

Honestly though, It doesn't really seem to be much of an issue in our day to day lives, does it? If you aren;t wearing a cross and babbling on about christ who's even going to know whether you were christian or not?

Fantastic!
I guess ultimately I just wanted to allow room for the idea that religions of any kind come with stereotypes good and/or bad. And that those stereotypes don't apply to each individual. In the case of the Christian who isn't babbling on about Christ, the only ones who would typically know about his Christian worldview would be the people closest to him (friends, family, etc). That range of people would be understandable to casually share why you believe what you believe. However when you reach that acquaintance/stranger area, you risk insulting people.

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Do you think it is possible for Christians and Athiest to come to terms with their differences? And if so, or if not, what do you think it would take to make something like that happen?

No, not really, not on a large scale at least. I'm not sure how things are elsewhere but in my part of the States I see the Christian complex everywhere and I am almost weekly approached about "Do I know Jesus?". When people find out I'm an atheist, they are generally put out like I had smacked them in the face (and I'm generally nice about it too, I've calmed down a good bit in my siesta from AF).

As for what it would take, I don't have a viable answer, but I wish I did.

Wow. Yea stories like that put a bad taste in my mouth. I feel like to really make a difference it would have to 1) come from the someone on the same side as their own to help them see what they are doing is culturally having the opposite effect of what they're trying to do. 2) Introduce the idea that people don't HAVE to have the same perspective you do in order to enjoy their presence (wow what a concept! haha)