Don't get me wrong. I"m not judging anyone who responds angrily to him, but I always try to understand why a person acts the way they do.
You are probably the nicest, most patient, most decent poster I've ever met on the internet.
And I've met a lot.
Tom
So are atheists scrooges by ruining all the fun of religious faith?
The answer is obviously, "NO".
I think that's partly true. Although some atheists might deliberately try to be spoilsports ruining fun for the religious, most atheists probably don't normally try to disappoint delusional religious people.
Perhaps a better question would be, "Do Christians condemn atheists, no matter how nice and kind the atheists are to them?"
Personally, I really don't run into much of that. But yes, some Christians think you're a bad person no matter how good you are. I see such thinking as a result of people adopting-group think for social reasons. In other words, say you believe whatever the group agrees on. That way you have a social advantage being more likely to fit in and have "friends." Under those circumstances hatred and paranoia can result when people outside the group hold outside ideas.
My mother, who died earlier this year was an evangelical Christian.
Sorry to hear that you mother died.
Both of my parents are now deceased, and in a way I feel like an orphan.
I told her when I was 19 that I no longer believed in the Christian mythology, viewing it as similar to Greek mythology. Although she was upset at first, we remained very close friends up until her death. Despite having suffered from Alzheimers for the last 7 years of her life, she still remembered who I was, as one of the last times we did FaceTime together, ( she lived about 1000 miles away from me ), she saw my face, and said, "That's my daughter". She even told my husband about 10 years prior to her death that she no longer believed that people like me were going to hell. I was very happy for her, as she no longer carried the burden of thinking that I was condemned to an eternity of suffering. So, please tell me how I ruined her Christian fun. In fact, she used to complain to me about her Christian friends who were trying to get her to vote for Republicans, when she had always voted for Democrats, believing their values were closer to hers. It seems to me that her Christian friends were ruining her Christian fun, if there is such a thing.
My mother was a very devout Roman Catholic, and she used her religion as a club to hurt people. As she got old, though, she evidently realized she better treat people better or spend the rest of her life alienated from them.
My two closest Christian friends know I'm an atheist. We love each other. One of them refers to me as her sister. The other one told me it doesn't matter what others believe as long as they are good people, who don't judge others.
Yes. That sounds like a good idea. So you really should apologize to me for suggesting that I'm mentally ill. I never spoke to you or spoke about you that way.
I don't think what I said about you was insulting. It certainly wasn't meant to be. I have a lot of compassion for people who suffer from emotional problems and while your last post was a more positive one, I do wonder why you felt the need to end it the way you did. I think that most of your past posts were judgmental towards the other posters, and that is why you've received so many negative responses from some of the posters here. I see that bilby just posted what I was thinking too. I didn't insult you. I was concerned about your well being, and didn't want our responses to make things worse.
Based on your posts, it appeared as if you had some type of persecution complex. If this isn't true, then I suggest that you try to be more positive when you post to us instead of jumping to conclusions and judging the atheists here the way you do, or have done. I don't hold grudges, and I'm not asking for an apology from you for the negative assumptions you've made about the posters here.
I'd love to see a more positive attitude from you. This can be a good place to discuss all kinds of things, not just whether or not the religious or atheists are spoiling each other's fun. Sometimes people don't realize that they might have some form of emotional disorder and while it's true I never met you in person, based on your posting history, it appeared as if you had a problem, feeling persecuted and projecting some of your own traits on the rest of us. That is meant as an attempt at constructive criticism, not an attack.
Perhaps if you are serious when you say you enjoy being here, you might gradually post in some of the other areas of this forum, without being defensive if people don't agree with you. Let's see how that goes.
Btw, I live in the heart of the Bible Belt, so it's very common for atheists to be attacked by Christians here. I have a few atheist friends in my age range who refuse to come out of the closet due to the fear of being attacked and judged harshly. But, being open, has also given me the opportunity to meet other atheists, including a nurse I worked with in SC, and a very dear patient of mine in my last job. Sadly, she died a few months after I met her. She died of pnuemonia, so at least she did't suffer for long.
I was verbally attacked by a Christian a few months ago, after she suspected I was an atheist, simply because I told her that I didn't believe in the idea of being "saved", but if it made her family happy to believe such things, that was fine. This came after she told me excitedly that her disabled niece had just become "saved". She and I get along fine now. Hopefully, she realizes that atheists aren't bad people. That has always been my goal, but I could write a long essay about all the times I've been attacked by conservative Christians, and even a couple of moderate Christians for that matter. I try to look at it in a humorous way, because after retiring from a stressful career as a health care professional for 42 years, humor has always been a great coping mechanism for me.
I'll share one of my favorites before I end this wordy post. About 10 years ago, we were at a Christmas/birthday party at my bro in law's home. He's a dentist and he has a lot of wealthy friends. I was chatting with a physician at the party and we were discussing how many parties were going on. He had just come from one, so I mentioned that we had just left an atheist meetup in Atlanta. He literally yelled at me."Why do atheists have to get together", as if we were some kind of evil people who weren't allowed to socialize together. I calmly said something like because we're humans and sometimes we like to meet up with people who we have things in common with....He got really angry and mean, so I told him he was too abrasive to keep talking to and I walked away. A few minutes later his wife came up to me to apologize for her husband's behavior, as she has overheard our conversation. She told me that I needed to understand that her husband was a doctor who had to deal with death. I told her that I was an RN who cared for people who were often at the end of their lives. She didn't know what to say after that, but I admit it gave me a little bit of pleasure to be able to walk away from an arrogant doctor, since nurses are often treated so poorly by some of them. I have a lot more episodes about how a Christian attacked me due to my atheism, but that was an unexpected one, as I used to tend to assume that highly educated people aren't so easily caught up in cult like behavior. I've learned that's not true at all. Atheists are the most hated group of people in the US, so I don't think we're the ones who are ruining anyone's fun. I'm open about my atheism to help people understand that we aren't any different from other people. We just believe in one less god than they do.
( 
