St. Augustine Asks the Hard Questions Atheists Don’t Ask

[skepticscott]

128. Irrelevant non-answer, made even sillier by your puffery

Answer the questions: Do you actually KNOW any of the people involved well enough to label them as complete human beings, or are you simply applying the general term "dumbasses" to them based on reading a newspaper account about ONE thing they've done in their lives?

Don't you think it would be more accurate, and less of a broad-brush smearing generalization (of the kind your wife decries) to say that they did A dumb thing, and leave it at that?

And if you'd read any of your wife's posts, you'd know perfectly well that actions and the religious beliefs that motivate them are inexorably linked (unless she's dead wrong about that). What's done by religious people, according to innumerable posts by her and others, HAS to be credited to their "faith" and "beliefs" (well, as long as it's warm and fuzzy stuff...the opposite is off limits and subject to charges of bigotry and persecution). So separating the two in an attempt to wriggle off the hook for insulting people's religion is more than a little disingenuous. I have no such hypocrisy. When people's religious beliefs clearly and directly motivate them to do foolish and destructive things, I have no hesitation in calling those beliefs foolish and destructive in those cases.