Stump the Christian?

[Esquilax]

Well, I personally haven't seen Randy doing any of those things.

Well, you haven't been around here very long. But there's a thread he started just a few days ago which was basically one long accusation: "The only reason you don't agree with me is because you're unfairly biased toward my ideas. Nothing you have said to me, where it doesn't agree with me, over the entire time I've been posting here, is something you legitimately believe, I dismiss it out of hand, and you're lying if you say that those arguments were the root cause of your disagreement."

Stuff like that, and the "you just hate god!" schtick that Randy's used on me before too, is some of the most profoundly rude conduct I've ever seen, because it doesn't just insult, it robs us of our voices, at least within the context of that specific conversation. It takes away even our ability to speak for ourselves, since the other party has empowered themselves to dictate our motivations and beliefs to us.

When assessing a forum poster I look for their tone and how respectfully they address people. I don't look for whether or not I agree with them or think their ideologies are hypocritical or whether I get offended by what they believe, etc. And while I did have one atheist buddy on there whom I really really loved, there were definitely a few others who were extremely rude and condescending. I said "outspoken" to put it politely because I don't want to offend any of you here.

See, here's the thing: I think we give as good as we get, generally speaking. It varies from person to person, obviously, but if you look back through the forum history, you'll see that we don't usually start out belligerent; there are christian members here who've fit in really well. We often get accused of just hating christians, and as a mod especially of being biased against the religious membership here, but when that comes up I can just point to Jacob, who came here as a christian and was just really cool about it, had a sense of humor, and as a result never got a hard time at all (except from Min, but nobody can stop Min ). Hell, we've even had theistic admins on board in the past; an objective look at the entirety of the board, rather than its current state, shows an extremely different picture than looking at a single christian who has, let's face it, said some pretty disrespectful things himself.

Randy got a hard time. Theists don't as a rule.

My bolding.

To be fair, some of you guys here have flat out called me ignorant for not agreeing with you on the existence of God. Amongst other things.

So? Ignorant isn't an insult: everyone is ignorant about some things. It's not some binding evaluation of your entire character, at least, that's not the way I'd take that, though it's hard to gauge without context.