If someone professed to believe in Zeus/Jupiter, Hera/Juno, Apollo and all the rest,

[cbayer]

23. I appreciate your thoughtful response here and agree with some of it.

Here's the thing. If someone told me they believed in *whatever*, I would ask them about it or do some research to find out more about it.

I recently had this experience with wiccans. While it doesn't speak to me at all, I understood a lot more about them after some investigation.

The OP here, as far as I can tell, was meant only to conflate all believers into a category called "wackos". (Side note: It fits at least 5 of the "logical fallacies" recently posted by another member, imo.) There is a school of thought here, held by a small, but vocal, number of members, that religious people will react in a very specific way to this. In fact, there is a whole set of such beliefs about religious people. Pretty much the same language is repeatedly used to proclaim these beliefs about other members. Those "truths" are maintained despite evidence to the contrary.

If you find the word "dogmatic" to not fit you, then feel free to reject it. If you find it pejorative, then I will withdraw it as insulting.

But I sure would like to see someone like yourself ask more questions and make less assumptions about large groups of people. I've been doing that with atheists and have learned a lot.

One last thing, because I know what is coming here (not from you, btw). Calling a group of legislators dumbasses for passing a bill that would make creationism a science to be taught in public schools is not the same thing as calling all fundamentalists dumbasses. Calling a group of people whose belief system includes the sacrifice of children wackos is not the same thing as calling all believers wackos.

That is, calling a specific group of individuals something because of a specific action is quite different than generalizing that to all who share something with them. There are some here who don't see the difference and are obsessed with trying to make it the same thing.