bushbasher,
If I understand you properly, your answer - to my question whether “Sellick is ... more offensive to those who do not share his world view“ than the author of a comment randomly chosen from a list of similarly worded posts - is yes.

I have to accept this, since there are no objectively valid criteria that would allow us to measure and compare the “offensiveness level” of one wording for one group of people with that of another wording for another group.

One cannot defend one‘s world view, or just point of view, without attributing some negative features to positions that one thinks one has to defend it from. However, one has to be on guard lest one‘s criticism degenerates into misrepresentations or worse. That was the point of my original objection to Sellick choosing atheism as the Aunt Sally in his dispute with an alternative interpretation of the Christian concept of God.

Truly, Sellick’s articles usually attract lots of comments, not all of them silly, and so do other articles involving religion; articles (and comments) which other people, e.g. Christians, might find “gratuitous“, “deliberately stirring“, or containing passages perceived as offensive; no need to give examples. In my opinion, this is not so much Sellick‘s or the other authors‘ fault: it is so because religion (and the notion of God in the western tradition), plays a very important personal and intimate part of the human psyche, whether accepted or rejected, acknowledged or denied, perceived positively or negatively, on the emotional, rational or moral levels.

Thus in spite of the fact that “offensiveness is in the eye of the beholder” we should all try to refrain not only from personal attacks on the author of an article, but also from utterances that could possibly be thus conceived by a non-negligible group of readers. This was the point of my “defence“: not of Sellick but of this principle.

AdamD,
I simply referred to your post as one of two examples (I chose yours simply because it was the last one in the thread) that revealed how some atheists view Christianity (and theism in general) partly explaining why some Christians and atheists react emotionally.

I apologise if either

you do not considered yourself an atheist, or
you did not want to reveal what you thought about Christians, or
you do not think that you contributed to raising the emotional level of some contributions, (although this is better left for others to judge).

pelican,
Thanks for the kind words.

Foxy,
>>I do object to an author ... using ... language ... that ... will offend people <<
That's OK, I expressed similar sentiments a number of times when articles (or comments) appeared here that could offend people, whether Christians, Muslims, atheist or what. I just queried the adjective "personal" in your post.

AAAH Spikey.. you can always tell when someone has lost an argument :)

They resort to personal abuse alone.

I invite you to examine the keegstra case in more detail..and the Mark Harding case..and.. dare I say it.. Canadian Law in the thread "The keegstra case etc"

It's a pity that when the facts are against you... you run and hide whining behind the veil of 'ad hominem'....

CJ.. the only purpose of witnesses would be to establish the following:

1/ Do Muslims accept the Quran as authoritative today?
2/ Is scholar (name the scholar) highly regarded in the Muslim community?

Once that's out of the way..we can move to surah 9 and then..when they try to worm their way out of the plain hate speech meaning... we refer to the opinions of the scholars they have just declared 'Highly reputable'.

That's called a 'double pincer movement'.... invented I believe by Khalid bin Al Waleed against the Byzantines at the Battle of Yarmuk.

Dear Spikey,

You're far more patient than anyone else would be
under the given circumstances.

But, as Voltaire said (I think it was Voltaire):

"The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with
those who do not possess it."

I only wonder what would happen to an Arab/Muslim Australian if they
carried on against Australian Christians - quoting
only the bad bits from the Old Testament across various threads, and
continued on with a series of escalating messages filled with emotion-
filled opinions, words, and upper-case letters?

Would they get arrested by the Federal police?

Just a thought.

crabsy, I think you may be pushing the proverbial uphill.

>>As I tried to point out in my previous post, Peter Sellick is saying that the “atheists” are NOT dark and evil. He asserts rather that “there are no real atheists”<<

Does he, indeed?

"Certainly the self professed atheists of our time are tame pretenders compared with the real character of atheism. This is quite a different picture to that of the atheist as the rational and brave searcher after truth and the prosecutor of superstition and barbarity"

Are you perhaps suggesting that Sells is saying "atheism is dark and evil", but modern atheists aren't dark and evil, therefore they cannot actually be atheists?

>>Otokonoko has just echoed a point one or two other posters have made in their own ways. E.g. “Atheism is not a disbelief in a god - it's a disbelief in any god at all.” I have to respond that the word “god” in itself can mean different things to different people. To say you don’t believe in “any god at all” still leaves you open to the question: What do you mean by that word ‘god’?<<

Pure sophistry. I mean exactly what you mean by the word.

It is the image of God that you have in your head, in whatever form that may take, that I don't believe in.

If you didn't posit the existence of a God in the first place, I would not have to disbelieve in it.

LOL! Great example of a religious "argument". Gobbledegook indeed.

First he declares that before demolishing a point of view, he ignores it as he "feels" there will be no benefit.
(Reason 1 I am an athiest: Religion is irrational and relies on *ignor*ance. You must *ignore* real world evidence to maintain sanity and faith. Therefore you are not seeking God, you are excluding Him!)

Then he declares Athiests limited and evil.
(Reason 2 I am athiest: Religion makers you hate others purely based on difference. It panders to the tribal animal in us. Evolution has driven us to over-commit to family/tribe and to fear and destroy non-"us" competition. Overcomming this instinct involves seeing all humans as "the tribe". Religion explicitly endorses "the other guy is evil" and thus encourages conflict.)

The rest of the article is essentially meaningless. Writings of the Flying Spagghetti Monster are far more illuminating.

Religion ruled for thousands of years and humans remained "primitive". Learning from nature, retaining humility and honesty, and non-tribal relationships have given us science, which gives us the chance to leave our cradle and truly grow up.
Religion is a childish phase that we need to shed to continue to evolve.
I am hoping that what we are witnessing now is the rise of a true secular power base. The subterfuge and pain caused by Christianity's attempts at social engineering have become to get quite irritating, and the "moral flexibility" displayed by christians such as Howard/Bush show that evil is never far away from ignorance. Sorry to the good christians, but the bad ones are getting quite out of control.