Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-226878-20150710200046/@comment-24891101-20150729180451

I would thank you to not dictate to me what a group feels that I am a member of and you are not.

You're flatly wrong, in my experience. Anecdotal evidence is not particularly useful, but I'd like citations on your statements, because I'm rather more familiar with lines of atheist thought than you are, being one of them myself. Nothing you said has any resemblance to reality that I'm aware of, and I have more than a decent understanding of atheists in general.

What you describe is a perticularly virulent strain of antitheism. Antitheism is the position that religions are harmful. But even they (and I speak as one with significant sympathy for that viewpoint) are in general not so extreme as to want to purge religion by the sword. Rather, they want to minimize the influence of religion on society, and get it out of government and policy decisions. Atheists in general mostly simply want to live and let live. We support secular government, freedom of expression, and yes, freedom of religion. This is because in many places, atheists are ostracized or even killed. Therefore, enshrining these freedoms makes everyone happy. These are humanistic principles, and while atheism is not synonymous with humanism, the two often go hand in hand.

What you propose is that most atheists are akin to Daesh. That's a high-order defamation, and you'd better have some goddamn good evidence, or I will ask you to kindly shut up and not grievously insults tens of millions of people the world over.

Cite up or shut up.