Am I the only person that gets mad when somebody calls themselves an atheist? That's a specific title saying that you don't believe in any God(s). The title is a negative. It's an active state of denial.

Pretty much everybody is an atheist. The vast majority of Christians don't believe in the divinity of Zeus, to name just one obvious example. An atheist merely has one less god than a Christian. I fail to see how they're anymore living in a "state of denial" than any Christian. Or Muslim. Or Jew. Or whatever.

Further, they are unable to acknowledge the limits of conventional science to explain the whole of reality.

What exactly are these limits? And what part of reality has religion successfully explained? I certainly don't pray my car to work in the morning. Burning incense doesn't keep our nuclear power plants running.

But disbelievers will appreciate being made to feel a little more secure in their disbelief, at least for a while.

I agree. Those of you who choose not to believe in Zeus will feel a little more secure . . . until he fries you with a lightening bolt for your insolence.

Condemning religion by attacking the loose cannons is as ethically unfair as condemning all Muslims for 9-11.

That's a really poor analogy. 9-11 was a single event. It would be unfair to blame all members of a group for a single act of outrage committed by a bunch of loons. But we aren't talking about a single act here - we're talking about a decades-long pattern of abuse which has not been effectively contested by the supposed majority of religious moderates here in the US.

Fundamentalists of all stripes have been striving for decades to deny broad swaths of our population their Constitutional rights. We aren't talking one single event here - we're talking tens of thousands at the local, state and federal levels, over decades. And that's just looking at the government. I won't even mention the kind of abuse religious bigots subject our schoolchildren to, or the kind of prejudice which takes place in the private sector.

I just want to give credit to Barry Lynn who is a devout Christian (a minister, I believe) and also the head of People United for the Separation of Church and State. He takes on the whacky fundamentalists frequently on television and we need more like him.

Oh, I agree. The sad thing is this guy is so notable because he's such a rare presence in our society. In spite of the fact that over 90% of the population of the US describes itself as religious, and that supposedly "most religious people" think the fundies are "quacks", guys like Lynn are about as rare as snow in Phoenix.

You religious moderates do realize the fundies will come after you next, don't you?

If he truly wishes to convince anyone, why not take on--as Harvey suggested--a more worthy opponent than fundamentalists? (who even most religious people think are quacks)

If "most" religious people think fundamentalists are "quacks", why aren't we being carpet bombed with books, editorials and above all legislation - written by "most religious people" - condemning fundamentalist quackery? After all, religious people make up the bulk of the population. If "most" religious people felt that way, you'd think you'd see a lot more opposition to fundamentalism.

Instead, it seems to me like the only ones actively opposing the fundamentalists are atheists and those groups (women's rights advocates, certain ethnic and religious minorities, gays, lesbians and the transgendered) under constant legislative assault from fundamentalists.

That's OK though. When they've successfully denied those groups of their rights, they'll happily move along to destroying the rights of "most" religious people (or just outright slaughtering them, the way fundamentalists are doing today in Iraq).

It strikes me that Atheists should step up and shout down the minority of extremists that believe that people's religions require constant debunking and patronization.

Except you're all atheists. Virtually none of you believe in Zeus, or Isis, or any of another host of deities. So you're all quite willing to patronize believers in fringe religions, and impose your own more mainstream god concepts and their attendant moral quirks on everyone else regardless of their beliefs. And you've been doing it - at least here in the West - for about 2,000 years, long before mean old atheists were calling you on the irrationality of your own beliefs, and dismissing them as you dismiss others'.

It's only been since the Enlightenment that atheists have even been free to voice such criticisms without potentially fatal consequences. It's not "extremist" to point out that the Emperor's not wearing any clothes.

Then suddenly in the mid-nineteenth century we get a crop of philosophical knuckleheads who arbitrarily decide the human race cannot progress even one more step without jettisoning belief.

Didn't you hear there's an energy shortage? You should waste less hot air blowdrying strawmen.

If atheism is a religion then bald is a hair color.

It also cracks me up to read theists railing against atheists. With a few exceptions, most theists are all too happy to dismiss concepts of god or gods which don't agree with their own. Pretty much everyone's an atheist. Some are just a little more intellectually honest than others, for whatever reason, and dismiss not only the god concepts of other cultures, but also the prevailing concept(s) of god they grew up with in their own culture.