Comment by Helen Pluckrose on March 6, 2012 at 12:23pm

Ah, the 'You're only trying to get others to accept your point of view because you doubt it yourself' fallacy. Atheists get accused of this a lot of Yahoo Answers. 'Why would you keep coming here and arguing that god does not exist? If you genuinely did not believe in him you wouldn't talk about him at all.' The answer to that is that religion does exist and harms society.

People also ask why Christians (particularly) keep on at atheists if they are so sure they are right - why not just go and relax in your 'knowledge' of your rightness. The problem with that is that if you truly believe that the only way to avoid Hell and go to heaven is to believe in a certain god, then you have to be pretty selfish not to try and save other people. It would be like watching a blind man walking off a cliff and him ignoring your warning. Wouldn't you keep shouting at him and even tackle him to save his life? As an ex-christian myself I can appreciate the intention of these Christians who try to save people even when they'd probably much rather be doing something else and they get abuse. Just because they are wrong does not mean they don't mean well even tho it is boring and irritating.

I save my condemnation for the Christians gloating about their belief that we will go to Hell and those using their religion as an excuse to be sexist, racist or homophobic.

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