everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Aiza]

You know this article doesn't distinguish between atheists and people who don't go to church much, yet you keep throwing it at us.

The last time I "threw it" at anyone was over a week ago, and it was specifically in response to Epi's denial that religious people (not "theist" people) had better self-control, etc. than irreligious people, when science shows otherwise.

Go back to the posts and look for yourself. It centers around religion, not theism.

Edit: Also, needless to say that the personality study uses a wide range of measures of religiosity (Section 2.2), most of which are internal and not external, and church attendance is not one of them. Church attendance usually plays a larger role in some of the health studies, where it explains up to half (though not all) of the gap.

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A religion is a whole plethora of beliefs. Atheism is a single disbelief.

But if we were to lump together all religious, we would find they hold absolutely no beliefs all in common, whereas atheism holds that disbelief in common (or it should, though I don't want to bring back up that Pew Forum poll).

Either way "I believe X and I will kill all others who disagree" can be seen as an extremist position.

Before I delve into that, I would like you to use the actual definition of cult to form your answer instead of making up your own. Time is precious. Try to not to mince words.

Both definitions of cult I gave were straight out of the dictionary. They are the "actual definitions", and were not "my own".

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cult&tbs=dfn:1

Okay, so here's your precious Jesus, leading by example.

Yes, a metaphor in which he uses sword to represent generational divide, which is expressly non-literal given many other sayings in the book and in others which note that violence is not permissable for a Christian. (Including one where the Apostles try to take him literally when he mentions a sword in the context of conflict between Christians and society and he has to snap at them).

Furthermore, if we are talking about Catholics specifically, we don't interpret the Bible for ourselves (its actually pretty expressly forbidden). A better guide to Catholic beliefs is the CCC which incorporates all relevant scripture passages, Ecumenical and particular councils and synods, professions of Faith, Pontifical and Ecclesiastical documents, Canon law, liturgy and writings from the Saints into one definitive book of Catholicism. If you look more closely specifically at Part 3, Section 2, Article 5 of the CCC you will find that yes, murder is totally unjustifiable under the Catholic religion. Who knew?

Atheists have no holy book filled with contradictions and orders by a supposed deity who is far from blameless.

Wait what? You don't need one. What an oddly specific requirement you have in order to call something "extremist". All of religious don't share a single holy book, but you'd still let the phrase "religious extremism" slide. Catholic dogma expressly forbids any sort of violence. You still think that "I am a Catholic and will kill anyone who disagrees" is "Extremist Catholicism", when an extremist Catholic actually needs to go against Catholic beliefs; whereas it is intolerant to say that "I am an atheist and I will kill anyone who disagrees" is "extremist atheism" in spite of the fact that nothing within atheism precludes this behavior.

You never gave a good phrase or term which could be used in replace of "extremist atheism" either.

There are no clueless followers who spout utter lies to protect their ignorance. There are no bullshitters who are supposedly training to becomes sisters but spend their time on atheist forums repeating back swears and spewing emoticons with their tongues sticking out because they think the tripe they spew is clever.

Oh geez. There are plenty of clueless atheists, I promise you. And no, I am not "training to become a sister". I want to become a sister. You don't start any sort of "training" process until you've already entered a community.

I apologize if my repeating back "a swear" offends you, that certainly was not my intention. My intention was to expressly point out how your own statements wrt atheism can be flipped. I hardly use the smilie because I think I am being "clever" just by stating a few easily searchable facts, but just because I think they are cute and fun. I'll try to refrain from using it with you from now on.