Hi. I'm a militant atheist. Do you fear me?

[Rainforestgoddess]

163. Yes, people can absolutely pick their own labels.

More power to them. But they have to accept the baggage that comes along with the label they choose.

And it helps if they don't deliberately misunderstand analogies as literal slurs.

Nobody has accused stone space of burning churches. Nobody has called him a nazi or a communist. Nobody has told him they are afraid of him.

This is, as cbayer pointed out, a baiting thread with manufactured outrage liberally applied.

MOST atheists object to the term, because it is generally used as a slur. If one atheist asks another to rethink the term, there could, in fact, follow an actual, useful conversation on why one person thinks it's okay, and why the other does not. Instead, what we get are bizarre and rabid accusations of 'silencing' 'red baiting ', accusations that we think Martin Luther King burned churches. It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone.


Wave your finger at me if you like. I tried to have a real conversation. I don't have a history of confrontation with him, so this is not baggage from before spilling over, which may be the case with some of the other people involved in this thread.