From: "James F. Tims" <p00168@psilink.com>
Subject: Re: is it necessary to hate?
Organization: Semper Excelsior
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 00:48:27 GMT
X-Mailer: PSILink (3.2)

>DATE:   14 Dec 92 22:56:48 -0600
>FROM:   mccall3080@iscsvax.uni.edu
>
[...]
>I somehow thought that the majority of atheists would be the same way,
>but I see many people who find it necessary to go out of their way to bash
>people with religions.  Why is it necessary to do that?  I know that it gets
>annoying when people with religions won't leave you alone and it is easy to
>retaliate, but it is not doing you or other atheist any good.  You are just
>proving to people with religion how irrational and full of anger you really
>are.

>So this is my problem and the only thing I ask of you, fellow atheists,
>is that you think before you flame.  Since we are a minority, everything you
>say and do will reflect upon all atheists.  Maybe this isn't the way it should
>be, but it is the way it is.
>
>Melissa
>An Iowa raised Atheist
[Lower the shields, Mr. Sulu.  The vessel seems to be unarmed.]

Don't get defensive!  8^)  I'm here to help you out, honest.

When you start paying propery taxes, your objections to religion may
seem less trivial.  I doubtless speak for some of us (since I have heard
much the same from others of us), when I say our disagreements with religion 
go beyond annoyance.  In a world ever-more-burdened by human fecundity,
where our very numbers threaten to strip the globe of its beauty, we
find Xianity resisting every effort to limit the foreboding growth of
humankind.  I find this more deeply troubling than even war, and the
greatest possible sin against the Earth itself.  

When religion takes money from poor people who can barely feed themselves,
it bothers me.  When religion keeps children from receiving adequate
medical care, I care.  When religion intrudes on public education with
demands that public funds support the dissemination of their pseudoscientific
superstitions, it eats at the roots of freedom, for an ignorant people
cannot sustain their own liberty.  When public utilities donate to
religious organizations, it smells of theocracy.

Half the houses in the development where I live are owned by a Bible
Camp and its associated ministry.  The members move into these homes
following sufficient donations of tax-deductible dollars.  No property taxes,
no school taxes, no rendering unto Caesar.  The rest of the citizens 
make up their share of the cost of running the services of local government.
In this case, Jesus gives great deals in real estate that the government
denies the rest of us.

Our grievance with religion remains more secular than philosophical,
more in what the practitioners do publicly than what they believe privately.
In academia, practical affairs intrude in debate less strongly than in
the competitive world where suffering and injustice are more than nerely
topics for abstract, idealistic discussion.  The disembodied world of
the Internet is even more remote from reality than a classroom, and we
sometimes fail to see anyone at the other end of a sentence with which we
disagree.  All things considered, atheists have perhaps too much patience
with the posters who support the religious organizations that enslave and 
degrade society, that stand against freedom of thought and expression, 
that encourage the overcrowding which rapes the planet, that foment 
disharmony between them and those disagree with their myths.  

We see a lot of humor in this group.  Since no atheist takes god
seriously, by definition, we sometimes fail to consider that we might
hurt someone's feelings by not showing respect for their invisible friends.
I, for one, do not apologize.  Give me a good straight line from a theist
and I'll make a joke out of it.  Give me testy posters whose arguments
tritely repeat the stifling dogmata of intolerance and ignorance, and
they open themselves to personal attack.  When their statements show they
haven't even read the FAQ, well...duck.  I just cannot bring myself
to have sympathy for them or respect for their position.  When they
become insistent, I have neither respect for them nor sympathy for their 
otherwise pitiable delusions.

I hazard that I have thought about these things too much, if anything.  
Remember that humanists care about people, while theists care about god;
that atheists care about our palace of life, while theists care about 
the gates to heaven and hell.  But take your time becoming a jaded
old cynic like me.  You're only young once, and the world might be a
better place by the time you're my age -- and just maybe you will have
had something to do with that.

In the meantime, the theists are MEAT in this newsgroup.  

-jim tims