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Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Being an asshole to people about things that matter deeply to them isn't convincing. Neither is the obvious public self-gratification such behavior constitutes. And too, it hardly helps advance one's cause to comport oneself in such a way that people who otherwise agree with you find themselves risking embarrassment by the association.

That's not a problem rationalism in the contemporary meaning really has, although I'm not sure this constitutes an improvement on net over its predecessor movement given how much the gloss of scientism tends to make its flights of fancy look more worth taking seriously than they deserve.

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Sorry, that's not good enough. Atheists aren't burning down churches. Atheists aren't throwing eggs at Christians. Atheists aren't bullying young indoctrinated children, nor are Christians, members of the largest religious group in the world, being persecuted by the big atheist conspiracy.

So any cry that we should be nicer to you and not roll our eyes when we get into this topic is literally what someone calls "being a snowflake."

I know it is hard to understand in this age of politically correct culture wars, but it is possible to have an harmonious society with disagreement of opinion. But if someone starts to cry "help, help, I'm being repressed!" because someone makes fun of your supernatural being, that goes out the window.

After growing up gay in rural Mississippi, there is really nothing you can tell me about being oppressed by Christians. I would just prefer your movement's tactics to have been slightly less incompetent back when there might actually have been some chance of accomplishing anything. That's been a long time ago now, of course.

I said the same then, to much the same level of vitriol in response. At this point I really believe that it's more about behaving this way for the sake of it than about trying to accomplish any kind of real change.

There has never been any vitriol.

I think the issue here is you might be a little sensitive to people not accepting your beliefs/life, which given your history you've shared here is more than understandable, and me going deep into my defence of free speech and atheism because is my core belief, but not my entire personality, so I don't actually give a crap, I usually engage people on something more interesting than this kind of argument.

I sympathise with your life struggles and recognise I might've touched a nerve. At the end of the day, I do really not care what anyone does with their body, their mind or their spirituality. Yet, I encourage you to accept that not every disagreement is vitriol or a personal attack.

Nothing is more dull than discussing religion, politics and sports affiliation, so I hope we can engage in better terms on more interesting topics on this site.

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