The first comments in this letter section reveal the sort of dogmatic, ignorant atheism that makes relations between theists and non-theists so painful and annoying.

I am an avowed Christian heretic, a believer in both Christ and universality, in both the divinity and humanity, the immanence and transcendence of God. And I have no problem getting along with, respecting, and loving people who may bitterly disagree with me, whether they are Christian fundamentalists or Marxist atheists, so long as they give me the courtesy of treating me like an intelligent and worthy human being.

The more I experience of this world and the people in it, the more I am convinced that the dichotomy between "believer and unbeliever" or "rational person and religious wacko" is false... the only distinction between people that I see is the distinction between people who are willing to love and interact with other people, and those who think themselves and their beliefs too important to bother trying to understand their fellow humans. That right-wing Christian fundamentalists fall into the latter category is a given, but of course people like the Angry Atheists here in the Salon letters section prove that so-called rationality (about which they seem to know so little) has its own special place in such a hell.

I hope all you Obamabots are happy.

Maybe Hillary was a bitch, but Obama's just proving himself to be a whore to the right wing. Just the kind of Hope we needed! Yes, he can (betray every progressive principle known to mankind)!

I am loath to defend Mormonism as a religion, but since I come from Montana and have many decent LDS neighbors I feel compelled to mention that mainstream LDS has banned the practice of polygamy for the past 100 years or so. I know it makes a clever catch-line but if you're going to stand up against mean-spirited mischaracterizations of women, you might as well have the courtesy to do it for people with whom you don't agree.

Just now noticed that the site is run by FLDS and not LDS. But, same principle stands, for any of you who might be tempted to confuse the two.

As a historian I read about beautiful women of legend like Eleanor of Aquitaine and it occurs to me that this was long, long before it ever became a necessity for women to shave their legs or arms (and think of what a literal pain it would have been in that age with those kinds of tools...). It really is bizarre that it is completely ingrained into our culture's sense of what is beautiful and what is not that a woman with either leg or armpit hair is, these days, considered revolting at worst and strange at best. If you add up the many generations of people for whom body hair removal was not an option, you'll find that we today are the weird ones with our preferences.

I guess that's just a long and complicated way of saying that I am in favor of grooming and hygiene but hair removal just seems like an absurd social ritual and I hardly mind when I meet (clean) people who don't feel the need to partake.

The fact that you feel the need to 'correct' or disagree with nearly everyone here might demonstrate, to the observant, that you are all alone in this argument and really no one is listening to you.

It must be some kind of faith for you to believe that singing the same old tune is going to suddenly make people think you're right instead of just thinking you're an ignorant jerk.

Cheers!

I have quite a few friends who are adamantly atheist and I don't seem to offend them by simply stating that angry atheists are annoying. Perhaps that's because they aren't angry atheists and don't feel the need to defend shrill, hysterical bigots who don't know the first thing about science or religion except that believing in the first makes them better than everyone else and mocking the second makes them cleverer than everyone else.