The undeserved umbrage of theists

MonkeyBalls

"That's offensive" is a quick and easy way to to shut down ideas that
you can't face up to, such as criticisms of religion.
Usually if you probe a little, you'll find an ironic vitriol in the
person who says it. "Richard Dawkins is an ignorant ****ing piece of
****, he's so judgemental of other people."
Hilarious.

Theists' distaste for atheists is not a function of how impolite the
atheist is, but of how close the atheist gets to successfully rattling
the foundations of their beliefs.

If you wanted to maintain the delusion of Santa Clause among adults,
the first thing you'd do is impose a moratorium on harsh criticism of
Him. The acceptable discussion would be "hard questions" (as theists
pretend to ask themselves) on why Santa Clause does what he does. Why,
for example, does he give more presents to rich kids than poor kids?
The followers would come up with Clause Theodicy to explore and
explain it, asking themselves these deep questions. Some rude brat
would ask "what is the best argument for Santa's existence?", and the
follower would shoot back: "Santa doesn't need an argument."

No matter how politely atheists phrase an effective point that
undermines theism, the theist will loathe the idea. An atheist who
explicitly takes the piss out of religion gives the theist a pretext
for ignoring his points. And the super-polite atheist who manages to
nail the Christian is the most annoying of them all, but they won't
admit that.

And this is natural. The atheist is implicitly telling you: your cult fairytales
are so ridiculous that they wouldn't get into an episode of Xena
Warrior Princess. Therefore, you're a deluded idiot, and your whole
life is a monument to the perverse depths of gullibility
(incidentally, in my opinion delusion is largely independent of
intelligence.)

That's devastating. For a theist, to accept that they could be utterly
wrong about the very core of their worldview would elicit
mind-rupturing explosions of cognitive dissonance and horrific mental
cost that most are not strong enough to endure. (Tellingly, this is
not so for most atheists - including me - who would love to be wrong
about this; wouldn't it be nice if there was an afterlife).

If you want to play the offense game, I'm offended that you tell
children they're going to burn in hell if they don't follow your cult;
by your demands for censorship and the punishment you dole out to
apostates; by the poison your pour into children's minds; by your
cowardly denial of the misery and suffering religion causes worldwide
and has caused throughout history. You're offended by our words? What
a perverse joke. We're offended by your deeds.

Idiots have tried to say,
"militant atheists are just as bad as religious fundamentalists". No,
not by a mile. Not. Even. Close

Dades

We've had one similar 'thread' already.

Consider getting a blog if you want to vent.