"religious people are always expected to learn everything they can about other people's way of thinking, such as so-called rationality and philosophy and science and mathematics, but no one ever returns the favor by bothering to treat us and our beliefs as anything other than children's tales."

While you have some thoughtful points, they're almost nullified by the persecution complex on display here. A religious person who wants to be an engineer HAS to learn basic math and physics in order to do their job. Only a devotee of a particular sect or religion NEEDS to learn the esoteric rules on how to be a Catholic, or a Calvinist, or a Baptist, or whatever other sub-genre of church you want to talk about.

Your post reads almost like some music snob assuming that everyone already knows, or SHOULD know, about the lineage of every obscure indie band that's ever existed in order to understand music.

And NO ONE of importance treats Christians' beliefs as childrens' tales. The Democrats and the Republicans have been bending over backwards to pander to churches and folk of faith everywhere, and this is how it's always been. I'm always amazed when Christians in this country complain about being some oppressed minority.

Persecution complex? I am merely responding to people who are making statements about my faith that are neither accurate not especially well thought-out. It's true that most people are ignorant of the real meaning of faith, including a lot of so-called believers. The statement of that fact is not an issue of persecution or not, just a plain fact. Unlike some people here, I am not getting riled up about this discussion.

And yes, an engineer needs to learn about math, and etc. But in the modern education system, no one is taught what they actually need for their profession. We are taught about freedom and the Enlightenment and philosophy and history and string theory and other basically abstract things that most of us will never use in our lives. We live in a society dominated by Christians and a world wholly shaped by Christian influence, so to suggest that you only need to understand Christianity if you're a Christian is like the caricature fundamentalist suggesting that his children don't need to learn about evolution because they are Christian.

I am not an indie music snob. Actually I am a classical music snob. But that is beside the point. The point is that the church has influenced all of us whether we like it or not... the very nature of this article, of Pullman's books, etc, reflects that. If indie rock bands were so influential I'd probably advocate learning about them as well. My point is that people are speaking on an important subject from a standpoint of ignorance, which is bringing down the whole tone of the conversation. If atheists and agnostics wish to live in conversation with their Christian neighbors, and other people of faith, they ought to try to understand the topic of conversation first.

Obviously, people pandering to the majority are going to treat the majority's beliefs as important. But I am not referring to those kinds of people. I am referring to the allegedly rational atheists here on the Salon forums who dismiss Christianity completely, and deride its followers as lunatics or sufferers of cognitive dissonance, without having made a real effort to understand any of the most basic principles of the religion.

I'll eat my big toe if any so-called rational atheist here has ever actually read significant works by Luther, or Julian of Norwich, or Karl Barth, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Gerald Forde. Gustavo Gutierrez and other liberation theologians, almost certainly not. Most people have probably only heard of Luther. And most atheists have never heard of the historical-critical method of reading the Bible, which has existed since the 1850s.

My point is that atheists dismiss Christianity when they know almost nothing about it, beyond their own trite preconceptions and the image that has been sadly propogated by Dr. Dobson-types and other cheap grace "Christians."

about that last letter, my actual writing starts in the 5th paragraph.

Your metaphor is just plain off. You call yourself an atheist, which means literally someone "without God." So obviously at some point you thought about God, or gods, or the great Pie in the Sky, or the Roman pantheon, and thought, "Nah, not for me." This is regardless of whether you ever believed in it or not. At some point the question came up and you had an answer. Otherwise you wouldn't call yourself an atheist.

If I called myself an anti-Indian-in-the-cricket-team-sense, then yes, your analogy would be accurate.

But none of that is relevant to the discussion at hand, for you still haven't addressed the real points of my letter.

I am in no way claiming that atheists have no ability to make moral judgments of Christians. Obviously there are a lot of so-called Christians who act in a far less than Christian manner and they deserve to be called on it. But you are not criticizing individual Christians. You are pointing at the entire tradition and calling it stupid when you clearly don't know much about it. I am not saying that as a moral judgment but simply an observation. Someone who thinks that Original Sin is a core principle of the true Christian faith is just plain ignorant of Christianity, end of story. I explained why that was not the case in my previous post. Unfortunately you have taken all your assumptions about Christianity and constructed an idea for yourself that anyone who believes in Christianity, which (in your mind) could not possibly mean anything other than what you have decided it means, is just plain stupid.