Skeptics, a question from a believer?

[LostOne4Ever]

13. The last time this question came up

Last edited Tue May 27, 2014, 01:03 PM - Edit history (3)

I only wanted one thing.

I have added a few things to the list since then. Here they are in no particular order. Note that I am using a general "you" and am not referring to you specifically. Further I am not just referring to just believers but from anyone arguing against the atheist point of view....even if they claim to be non-believers themselves.

1. I want consistent support for church and state seperation. Quit trying to find exception and excusing fragrant violations.


2. I want you to try and show some empathy. Some of us have had some really horrible experiences with religion and have extremely negative views on the subject, quit taking our criticism on it as an attack on you personally.


3. I want you to quit using religious terms to describe us. Fundamentalist atheist, atheist blasphamy, etc. are not okay.


4. I want you to listen to what we say and try and understand what is meant before taking offense


5. I want you to quit trying to tell us, actual atheists, what it is that we do or do not believe in. We actually have a say in that. This is how we define it


6. I want you to quit trying to link beliefs and practices to atheism that have nothing to do with atheism.


7. I want you to quit trying to call atheism a belief, faith, or a religion. It is a lack of belief and it is not a religion.


8. I want you to quit trying to create a false equivalency between belief and disbelief


9. I want you to quit trying to make atheism look like a movement


10. I want you to quit acting as if we have a leader(s) similar to the pope in Richard Dawkins or whoever


11. I want you to quit trying to act as if atheism and agnosticism are different positions on the same subject. One can be both an agnostic and an atheist.


12. I want you to respect our safe haven. This is a place for us to vent to other non-believers, quit alert stalking this room especially on jokes.


13. I want you to respect our safe haven. Coming in here for the sole purpose of making a thread to use against us to score points is not okay.


14. I want you to respect our safe haven. Quote mining here to bash us in other parts of DU is not okay.


15. I want you to quit generalizing us generally and anti-theist specifically. I am not an anti-theist but there is a case to be made against religion and making that case is not in and of itself bigoted.


16. I want you to call a spade a spade. This applies to the pope in particular. He has said some bigoted stuff and deserves criticism for it. Instead, we get called bigots for calling the pope out on his own bigotry.


17. I want you to quit defending bigotry in your attempts to defend religion.This is a progressive website I should not be seeing people defending religious liberty to deny people service or calling contraception rubbers...


18. I want you to quit attacking atheists on what you think we said, and rather base your criticism on things we actually DID say.


19. I REALLY really really want you to STOP making the argument that you have to be religious in order to be moral, or that only moral people are REALLY religious. It is so ingrained into your minds you do it without even thinking about it or how offensive it is to us. After Sandyhook, I had friends who said that all these school shooting happened because they removed god from our schools. This is HORRENDOUSLY offensive and factually untrue, they don't even realize it.


20. Finally I don't want you to blindly agree or disagree with everything we say, in fact I expect you to disagree with many things I listed. But I want you to argue with logic and reason.