Michael Moore <m.moore@utoronto.ca> wrote in message news:<zwkRc.286$a65.1560@news20.bellglobal.com>...
{repost]
10 Ways for the theist to be annoying
1. Name your god "God."
I don't consider this annoying. Most Christian and Jewish traditions
have reservations about naming their deity. Utilizing the title God
to refer to their god seems to me to be a just manifestation of their
convictions. No ding.
2. Cut and paste irrelevant information from the Internet and post it to alt.atheism.
That is certainly annoying.
3. Finish your sentences with the words "it's in the bible."
Likewise.
4. Refer to all your unsubstantiated claims as "theories". (For extra points, demand that your theories be taught in publicly-funded schools.)
I'll have to give them this one on a technicality. The term theory is
broad enough to include unsubstantiated conjectures. The problem is
when they conflate their pet theories with scientific theories.
5. Insist that you have evidence, but you'll only provide it after
you're satisfied with the answers from your 64 questions.
This is rather annoying.
6. Refer to non-believers as Satanists or monkeys.
I don't see that happen very often but, yes, that is an irritating
thing to do.
7. Insist that you used to be an atheist before being born-again.
This is conditional. Some theists are former atheists. The problem
is that most "ex-atheists" obviously were nothing of the sort given
their shoddy understanding of what atheism is (e.g., "I hated God!").
Certainly if one were to make this claim, it would be good to indicate
what your understanding of atheism was at the time.
8. Provide your own definition of atheism. (For extra points, include
"hatred for God" in that definition.)
Quite.
9. When things get sticky, change the subject to "objective reality" or
otherwise claim "God is love".
Evasion happens on both sides of the fence, of course, but, yes, this
too is annoying.
10. Insist that your favourite tyrant was an atheist because he/she wasn't a real Christian.
Utterly annoying.
--
Andrew Lias
http://andrewlias.blogspot.com
.
