Quiet Atheist vs Militant Atheist

[Cephus]

it's that secular society has told Christians that they can't act that way and has forced them to play nice with others.

Told is to weak a word. Society and legislation put some restraints on radical christians to prevent them from acting on their vile impulses. Every now and then some of them break free and the results are always ugly and usually leave some bodies in the streets.

The only difference between radical Islam and radical christianity is that thin layer of a still functioning society.

It really wasn't that long ago that Christianity got special privileges and Christians thought that their beliefs gave them special rights to do things that the rest of us could never get away with.  Today, the majority of those special privileges have gone away and more are vanishing all the time, that's why so many Christians are screaming discrimination because they're far too used to being better than everyone else, they just  can't handle  being equal.

[Silver]

I cannot be quiet. Atheists cannot be quiet. They do not all have to be as militant as me, but militancy does not mean war. After all, religion is more popular in that respect. But to sit back and not act is the kind of complacency that merely breeds more ignorance in our society. The only way to make a real change is for the majority to make itself known.

[abentwookie]

I fall somewhere in between the two groups. I initially went through a period of serious militant atheism and not only created a YouTube channel to attack religion, I would also actively seek out theists and attempt to dismantle their beliefs. I was very aggressive as an atheist. Unfortunately, I started seeing certain prominent atheists acting just as bad as the religious fundamentalists. One thing that bothered me was seeing them frequently using that same poor reasoning for their views. For example, theists would often make sweeping generalizations about atheists that were entirely baseless, such as suggesting that we have no moral values. Atheists, on the other hand, would imply that you had to be stupid to be a religious person. I started noticing that I was sometimes engaging in the same type of behavior so it forced me to take a step back and reexamine my views.

Now I take a different approach to dealing with religion. I will still point out bad reasoning from people, whether they are theists or atheists, but I usually won't actively "attack" theists unless they engage me first or say something particularly bad. I also no longer try to deconvert every theist I see because I know it is futile in most cases.