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Permalink Reply by Nelson on April 7, 2012 at 10:31pm

I'm not sure I understand where you're going here. The tone of the question is as if you're saying "Think this is just handy shorthand? Well how do you explain THIS??" when of course they're utterly different. And I may be misreading you; if so I apologize.

The first can at least be defended as shorthand, while the second is utterly indefensible given the symbol's connection to Nazism.

Plus, while you may have seen plenty of people using "xtians" I'd venture confidently that you've only ever seen one or two people using the the swastika version. And, furthermore, we can confidently say that a good number of the people using "xtians" are just doing it for shorthand and not to be offensive, the one or two people you've seen using the swastika version we absolutely know were being purposefully offensive. So what are we talking about here?

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Permalink Reply by Willson Stoner on April 7, 2012 at 11:14pm

I realize they are very different. When I first came to the site I thought the use of the word xtian was meant to be insulting but the cute variation is OBVIOUSLY meant to be nothing but insulting. I think this just feeds the notion that atheists are dirty, mean, evil, bad and nasty. No I haven't seen it used a lot. Still, too many times I think.

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