Comment by Suzanne Olson-Hyde on January 17, 2013 at 11:52pm

@Kris Fenstra - Self-publication is the only way for this charlatan - but the editing would cost him a very big bag full of money.

@Blaine - I haven't recovered from the last charlatan yet :)

Comment by Nate Lundgren on January 18, 2013 at 12:46am

I suppose some people can't accept the fact that they like being assholes and that is why people in real life don't like them. So they make friends with "Christianity" because it has no choice in the matter. Imaginary friends can't tell you that you are an asshole so of course they make people happy that like them. I have found that the more devout and pious a Christian is, the more likely they are to be a pompous asshole that few people like except dead mythological beings like Jesus. Their assumption of superior "understanding" of EVERYTHING is so goddamn obnoxious and pathetic. I'm sick of absolutist assholes that have little to no brain power to just accept reality as it exists. To justify their absolutist, fascist, bullshit attitudes they invent a god that is powerful enough to force other humans to bow down to their insanity. As an atheist, I can see through the veil of insanity like a good detective and destroy their deception with a few well constructed questions and arguments. Religion is a really tragic artifact of evolutionary development. The sooner we can purge the poison from our collective culture the better off every human will be. In summary, the idea of Jesus symbolizes your fragile and defective ego and flawed reasoning abilities. Wake up, grow up and find out what real courage, intellectual honesty and integrity requires and then come back and talk with us, Cameron W.

Comment by matt.clerke on January 18, 2013 at 1:13am

10/10, well done Troll. Had alot of us fooled. Bye.

Comment by Strega on January 18, 2013 at 1:16am

Spectacular, Nate!

Comment by Stutz on January 18, 2013 at 1:24am

with out a doubt, i have felt more judgement from atheists in my 2 years of being a christian than i ever have from christians out of my 30 years of atheism.

I think you'll find atheists are going to be more personally confrontational and forthright, especially on the topic of religion, which can be interpreted as being judgmental. In personal interaction, most Christians are going to want to shy away from the topic, and will usually be more coy and defensive. However, I think the situation is reversed when you look at the broader culture. Christians organize and fight the culture wars with much more focus and enthusiasm, and enjoy the implicit support of their overwhelming majority. These are typically the issues atheists object to when they describe Christians as judgmental. 

Comment by Brenda Lee on January 18, 2013 at 3:18am

I've only been here two days, but it seems to me that you've come into this online community looking for an argument. I think your entire story is fabricated. And quite frankly, I don't need you to convince Christians that I'm not a Satanist. I don't think you could have said anything dumber. 

Comment by Brenda Lee on January 18, 2013 at 3:29am

Does this sort of thing happen a lot here?

Comment by Sagacious Hawk on January 18, 2013 at 4:20am

Well, thank you for your honesty and your openness. I apologize for what may have been baseless accusations (on the internet, one can never be sure). A piece of advice if you are dead set on making this book a reality: as a person passionate about literature and communication, I can tell from your writing style and blatant disregard for certain rules concerning writing that you will need to find an editor with superior qualities in editing and patience, because preparing any book that you have written for a wider audience will need a considerable amount of work to make sure that the audience does not think that you are an 11-year old posing as an adult, which is about what I'd mistaken you for.

You'll have to come to terms with our skepticism here. Firstly, it's sort of a part of who we are, and secondly, there have been a few people of late who have seemed to come around to instigate fights. So do we make judgments of others? The truth is that all people are. As soon as we meet a person, we make a judgment. We do so based on body shape, body language, quality of voice, actions, words, and overall appearance just for starters. You make a judgment based on our responses as much as we have made one based on yours. You say that you disliked Christians because you "felt their judgment". Whether a person can be said to be judgmental in my opinion hinges on whether or not a person is willing to reassess those judgments as new evidence arises or whether a person refuses all new evidence to stick to the original assessment. Just because people express their opinion of you doesn't mean that they are being judgmental. It simply means that they are willing to speak their minds and treat with you honestly. I am certain your Christian friends have judged you in a similar manner; they just don't tell you what their judgments are.

Most atheists happen to like evidence and are more than willing to assess their given position based on the evidence that they have. So when I say that from my experience that we are not judgmental, it is from my definition of judgmental that I make that statement as well as my experience dealing with atheists both as a Christian and as an atheist. It has also been my experience (and many others on this site) that Christians as a whole are more resistant to evidence and tend not to reconsider their positions in light of new knowledge. This is why we say that Christians are judgmental. It is unfortunately too typical that when discussing things with a Christian that they will take a position, fortify it, and then refuse to even acknowledge basic facts. How you haven't experienced this in your 30 years of atheism, I'm not certain.

I can hopefully shed some light on why you have faced more criticism from atheists in the last two years since becoming a Christian. I think it might be similar to the same thought I first had as soon as you said "ex-atheist." My immediate reaction was, "how could he go back to believing what he had thought was false was suddenly true?" At this point, I think we all become instantly skeptical of any atheistic positions you might have had. Certainly if they were strong enough or if you had enough knowledge to know why Christianity was wrong about it's claims of the world, then you wouldn't have stopped being an atheist. For myself, I see anyone who claims to be an ex-atheist as someone who has given up learning about how the world is and has instead embraced learning about a fantasy version of the world. The more a person understands how we got here today through the history of the earth, the methods by which religion developed, and the history of any religion, then the more a person realizes how tenuous claims of any religion are. I see an ex-atheist as a person who has given into only one side of an argument without properly assessing whether those arguments are correct and in doing so has been conned into believing a fantasy version of the world where the laws of nature simply don't apply.

As it stands to your questions, I'm with Kris on this one. I, too, am curious why you need our input and why not stick you your 30 years of experience as a atheist? If you are an expert on your subject, why solicit us for information that we can reasonably expect that you possessed at one point?

Comment by Sagacious Hawk on January 18, 2013 at 4:22am

Brenda, these things don't happen alot, but they do happen often enough to warrant skepticism and defensiveness on our part.

Comment by Brenda Lee on January 18, 2013 at 4:27am

And we are the ones considered hostile and immoral. 

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