Would you agree with me that the militant atheists I quoted in my post are truly hateful?
I read some of the post, but I was quickly lost on who was saying what… The first paragraph, for example, didn’t seem offensive to me the slightest… I may have to give it a more thorough read, but the topic doesn’t really interest me. Some Atheists are great people, very few are God-haters.
I didn’t read it all, but I agree with Gabe that the first paragraph, for example, didn’t appear to be the slightest bit offensive. I certainly would not classify it as hate speech. But, I suppose we have differing opinions, which is quite fine. Maybe others will disagree with me.
I also struggled to get through it all, i think i managed about half. It’s difficult to work through that sort of vitriol.
However, i must make the contention that while we can ignore pure negativity, there are some things atheists/anti-theists say that we ought to sit up and listen to. They are the persecuted minority in our society (obviously there have been exceptions in various countries where the ruling power was or even is atheist/anti-theist).
Have any of you heard of the “not all men” line of reasoning? It’s basically used defensively by men when confronted with feminists who are trying to communicate why they have such trouble trusting men. They have had experiences where sexism and at worst abuse and rape have occurred, and rather than listen to their pain and do what can be done to stop these horrors, some men just defensively start saying “not all men do that!” and immediately shut down the dialogue. it may be “logically true” that not all men do these things, and most feminists would agree with that, but to make that statement and claim they are making straw men of all men just pushes their pain and distrust aside as if it doesn’t matter…and that means we don’t take the steps necessary from our end to change things.
this is relevant, because i perceive something happening among religious people, that we often make the claim “not all Christians/Muslims/Jews/etc!” and then we sweep aside the meaningful dialogue from those who have suffered at the hands of religious people. It does not matter if they’re logically coherent…and it doesn’t matter that sometimes they come out with pure hatred. It’s our job, as the privileged majority (the vast majority of the world, after-all, is religious)…we need to LISTEN, and we need to use the privilege and power society has unfairly given us to make things better. we need (as Christ did on the cross) to allow their hate to wash over us until it is exhausted, and then we rise from the dead with pure forgiveness and love for any wrong they’ve done us…but in our case, not as in Christ’s, we need to recognise that their hate has a raison d’etre, that it is human and understandable and even justified.
not all Christians? enough of us that the good ones among us have a job to do to change things.
Wish I’d said that!
I do not understand at all and feel rather dumb 
Could a charitable soul enlighten my poor mind?
I had second thoughts on my post and deleted it, Lotharson, but Dave caught it before that. The phrase he was enjoying was part of a description of certain “angry atheists” I have met. 
Your blog post was a bit confusing to me, and maybe to some of the others who’ve said they had read the first paragraph and found it reasonable. I clicked on the original post and read the first atheist’s post (to whom the second guy was responding), and then I realized, “Lotharson can’t be talking about this guy,” and looked a bit harder and located the second atheist’s post – but I’d already written my response here and didn’t have time to edit it, so I deleted it to wait for later.
At any rate . . . yes, you are right. The second atheist (who was critiquing the first atheist) was not a, shall we say, reasonable? person. I’ve met a lot of atheists very much like him though. And of course, most of them aren’t like that. Basically, I’ve found it’s best to just ignore the cranky ones. If the Holy Spirit wants to convict their hearts, I fear they will first need to be softened up a bit, probably by the sufferings of life (as is the case with many of us). It’s not fun, but in the end, it’s always worth it.