Right, because making fun of other people’s beliefs has done so much — throughout history — to promote peace and understanding.
How about “Choose Mutual Respect: It Will Be Better for All of Us.”
Thought Snax
Food for thought . . . in small tasty bites.
Thought Snax 
Here here!
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“Why are some atheists such a**holes?”
Because a relatively large percentage of HUMANS are a-holes.
Though I imagine a response to: “Choose Mutual Respect: It Will Be Better for All of Us.”, would be “You first.”
While I agree that calling someone’s god an imaginary friend is rude, it is significantly less rude than saying someone is going to burn in hell. And there are a lot more billboards with the hell message than the atheist one.
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True. I completely agree that there is a great deal of disrespectful name-calling and hell-consigning coming from religious folk. And of course calling someone an asshole is not the height of mutual respect, either. But it seems to me that if atheists are attempting to claim the high ground of rationality, this billboard fails miserably.
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The problem is that you can’t lump all of us together.
Some atheists prefer to only talk about things rationally.
Other atheists are pissed and want to be emotional.
I kind of understand both sides.
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I don’t know if it rises to the level of a-holishness by itself. Sure, it’s confrontational, but it’s also attention-getting, which is the real goal.
What I want to know is why all of the sudden every last anti-abortion billboard in the Twin Cities is all about the dads. “A Father’s Joy!” and “My Dad is a Hero!” are the captions–is it because they think that the fathers are the driving force behind abortions? Or is it that the sperm donors are going to assert some sort of father’s rights and prevent abortions in ways they haven’t in the past?
Or is it just another way to leave the women out of reproductive decisions? THAT’S what I call a-hole behavior.
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Well said
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Exactly. That, however, requires humility and wisdom, tolerance and a state of wishing to understand. All bullies lack such qualities.
Ginny
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I can only say “ibid” to Ginny….
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Perhaps because I teach Religious Studies at a Jesuit college, this sounds particularly adolescent to me. Jesuit colleges have core curricula, so all students have to wander through a REL classroom or two in their time with us. I hear frequent variants of “God is an imaginary friend,” along the lines of “Anyone who would believe that crap is stupid and ignorant. Don’t take that personally–I don’t mean you.” Most of my students are 18-22, so I chalk the hostility up to growing pains–many of them are in the painful process of shedding the beliefs of their childhood. Understanding difference–that we can disagree without impugning each other–is really hard. As to the billboard, it is unlikely to lead to dialogue with religious practitioners of any stripe or to change anyone’s mind about anything.
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