Best article I have read in a long time. Well thought out and places the onus where it belongs, back on our shoulders and not hanging it all on some poor old God who is probably totally fed up with the wallys who can not think past a two thousand year old pile of rotting goat skin.

Well done O'Connor and I will be watching to see if you have anything to say about the age old problem foisted on us by religion...overpopulation.

Beware of men who wear dresses, cloth hats and big dangly blin's!

G

“We are under instructions to spread the word, but I think we have to be very careful (respectful, considerate …) about how we do that. I know a lot of evangelistic behaviour is actually wrong because of the way it’s done.” (Goodtheif)

And the godly wonder why the ungodly, having put up with that uninvited intrusion continuously and incessantly for centuries, are just now responding to the godly’s most recent upsurge of organized world-wide evangelism?

> Missionaries who traverse the globe “helping people” often do little more than proselytise ... <

Well, to paraphrase slightly this proselytising author's own words, perhaps they also think that "it is not viciousness which compels them as Christians to speak out against atheism. It is with the hope that they can help those who live under the ever-looming spectre of god’s absence to stop accepting the illusion of freedom and truly experience it."

I have read some Christian rantings about unbelievers but nothing comparable with this piece of sweeping statements about religion. The author obviously has had experience with a lot of poor souls - of which there are many among Christians as well as among atheists - but she does not seem to have met an educated Christian, not to mention Christian philosopher or scientist. It somehow makes me doubt that she read Viktor Frankl or even Carl Jung.

>Religion is unique, though, in the sense that it literally dehumanises those with different beliefs, similar to the way that racism does<

This article is a good example that religion is not unique in this.

AJ Philips, Yes some theists are playing defence when they support separation of Church and State. My only wish is that this fact not be used to stereotype all theists: that would be unreasonable and inaccurate.

colinsett, I agree about “unwanted intrusion”, but remember I made the point myself. Mind you, I think we can all cope with being lobbied to some degree. If we can’t, then we dare not ever speak to a stranger, or allow a stranger to speak with us. However, some evangelising Christians clearly take it way too far.

In recent times, so have some evangelising atheists. For me, this has been both irritating and illuminating, because it’s put me in the shoes of the evangelised (the affronted and intruded on).

George, ditto.

Pax,

Goodthief,

<<Yes some theists are playing defence when they support separation of Church and State. My only wish is that this fact not be used to stereotype all theists: that would be unreasonable and inaccurate.>>

Yes, notice I said "many" not "all".

goodthief,

<< I think we can all cope with being lobbied to some degree. If we can’t, then we dare not ever speak to a stranger, or allow a stranger to speak with us. >>

I agree completely. However, it is one thing to "lobby" by trying to explain your world view to a "stranger" who does not see the world your way, and another thing to denigrate the stranger's world view because you are unable to see the world his/her way, like the author did it here with religion. It is one thing to say that spoken Turkish sounds TO ME like an incoherent sequence of voice bites (because I do not speak that language), and another thing to say Turkish IS an illogical, incoherent or what language.