Atheist extremism is bad... mkay?

[Cerrone]

Okay, when I said 'hate speech' what I mean was exactly what Paul is talking about - bullshit nitpicking, and a whole lot of shouting without actually accomplishing anything. If the person came up with a passionate argument, I completely agree that it should be addressed/engaged. I love passionate arguments. What I don't think makes a positive impact in this world in any sense is useless "I hate [insert usually random and pointless shit to complain about]." I see people like this all the time. I think I mentioned in my post that we SHOULD get angry about many things - the harmful actions religions have made people do in their name SHOULD be argued against and activism taken. I'm not saying sit idly by. But you must agree there's a difference between what I think you're trying to say, which is "we're not going to stand by while you do this anymore" and "I hate you because you do this" (which I think we can agree isn't constructive.)

I totally agree with that, but the reason I brought you up about using the term "hate speech" is because it's used by many people as an automatic dismissal of the persons views and how he came to those views, and that dismissal is counter productive to finding solutions. I've spoken with the kind of people that would be described as engaging in "hate speech" in my life and because I didn't switch myself off and zone out I was able to turn them around and find common ground and build on that ground.

My point really is that an atheist activist has more in common with an atheist extremist (whatever extremism may be), and for them to argue with themselves while their common enemy is still doing as he pleases it makes no sense whatsoever. That comes back to destructive individualism; hypothetically defined when two people place their own vanity or minor issues which each other before that of accomplishing a goal which is in the interests of both of them. The small issues you would have with an atheist who would be described as extreme are surely not worth fighting over, and surely it makes more sense in the interests of acheivement and accomplishment to work together, because you've got more in common with that guy than any hardened catholic, deluded evangelist or even the better moderate form of christian, who still produces the same effect of the extremists, but doesnt realise it.

A few loud and obnoxious people calling themselves atheists going up to religious people and basically acting the same way my ex's ignorant Baptist family treated me makes it look to anyone else looking on that atheists are no different from those who follow invisible men.

How exactly do you define extremeism, and where do you draw the line? When I hear extremist, I think of terrorists. I think of people bombing places they feel don't fit into their version of society. I think of people who use unnecessary violence on the idea that it's the only way to get attention.

A christian will define you as an extremist once you tell him that you're an athiest. He'll regard your opinion as invalid and switch off to anything you say, and so often passive and polite conversation isn't enough to convince him otherwise.

In my experience- and i'm a product of the society i'm in and I know attitudes are different elsewhere but i'm in england and I see a lot of indifference and a lot of problems caused by ineffective moderate political attitudes, and its because moderation and passivity just doesnt work when you're dealing with christians or anybody who has the option of not listening to you! In contrast to moderation and passivity, it's only when i've displayed passion or anger that these people have dropped their condesending attitude and begun to listen to what i've said and take it on board- and vise versa.

If you bind yourself to passive action and then you enter a fight with someone who isn't so noble as to show you mutual respect and be passive also, then you're going to lose that fight quickly.

And that's an analogy for athiest activists trying to combat christianity.

Of course, this is only my opinion, but I'm sorry I don't feel like we're living in Brave New World. I have to be quite honest, the second you refer to that and 1984, I start to close off - it's too much like my paranoid, racist, delusional and bipolar father, who thinks the world has been blinded. Before you accuse, I'm not putting those labels on you! I just think it's unfair to say that we're living in a world where people have no idea what the hell is going on.

I brought it up because you said "hate speech", and for the reasons i've just given lol

I have to say though, and this is my opinion too, that Brave New World is a very accurate description England and of peaceful political activism as a whole. And I realised very early on that moderation renders you almost afraid to be passionate about your beliefs with the fear that you may come across as being considered extreme in some way, but why is that? I've never been able to understand the logic of people who would commit themselves to overcoming something -whether its an army or a law- and through peaceful activism and obeying the laws they go through the courts and the legal process and then they lose as they often do, and then they either give up or keep going through the courts hoping to get a different decision. And whats the point of doing that when it's totally ineffective and acheives nothing?

What i'm trying to get across here is that if you can convince an evangelist through polite conversation that he may have been in error in his beliefs then my hat goes off to you, well done, but if you can't convince him by that method, will you give up?

Because when people from any religion, group, clique, etc sit around and talk about only how they hate something, day in and day out, it's the first step down that road to lynchings and the like. Sit a bunch of fundamentalists down and let them whip themselves up about how they 'hate fags'. Do you think atheists are above that? Who's to say in the future there won't be atheists running around policing anyone who happens to NOT not-believe, just because they're the majority?

As I see it atheism is the first step down the road to enlightenment and intelligence. Once a person no longer abides by the slaves laws that their religion has given them they eventually begin to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of other people around them because instead of valueing the delusion of heaven after death of a life of slavery, they realise -or they should realise lol- that this world is the only chance we really have at paradise, and that they can make it a reality.

So for that reason I don't think that you'd ever find an atheist lynching a christian, you may find that christian being vigourously talked sense to, but certianly not treated with violence for the sake of violence.