It’s just going to keep happening as long as people keep teaching children their stories.

We have the Church of England which is something that old people and posh people do for form’s sake and is fairly liberal and mostly too dull to be scary. We have various more active religious institutions wherever there are immigrants because they make people feel connected and at home and because religions will always leach off the poor and excluded. We don’t, as yet, have too many fundamoentalists but just in case we’re learning how to fight them off. We’ve seen what’s happened to you lot and we don’t need that over here thanks.

So, yeah, those of us who care about the separation of church and state, but weren’t too fussed about the issue of whether there was a god or not, saw Dubya and Palin and their ilk and the chaos they have brought and decided we’d better learn more about our real opinions. When we looked into it (mostly by looking stuff upon the internet) it turned out atheism was the only logical choice. So we’re standing up and being counted before those people can get more than a toehold.

Are you blind, standalone? dorkmanscot behaved like an idiot and several of us called him out on it. Noone has defended him. How exactly is this a double standard on our behalf?

Nice to see Standalone still hasn’t grasped the irony.

“I’m calling out atheists who get all butthurt about the criticism of religion hating bigots.”

Thing is, Standalone, if religion didn’t harm me an awful lot more than it helps me (as an Englishman, I’ve been bombed by Catholics and by Muslims, but never by atheists) then I wouldn’t hate it. I would love all religion to be gentle, harmless stuff that keeps itself to itself – but it can never be that way. As soon as you convince people that they have the only viable knowledge of God’s will (which is pretty much what all religions say) then it’s only a matter of time until the zealots start to appear – and we all know what happens when fundamentalism rears its ugly head – stuff starts to go BOOM.

“I know just how desperately you want it both ways but you look pretty retarded to demand exclusion from having the likes of dorkmanscott picked apart as you claim all priests are pedophiles.”

Dorkmanscott is a troll who poses as either a fundie Christian or a fundie atheist, depending on which will cause the bigger argument. Several atheist commentators on this blog have suggested that his IP should be banned for trolling and sockpuppetry – however, that decision is ultimately Daniel’s. Personally I just ignore him because I think everything he says is tainted by his earlier actions and I don’t trust that he actually means it – I think he’s just shit-stirring.

Anyone is allowed to call Pat out for the moron that he is. The same applies to any atheist who may behave in a similar manner. But you seem unable to grasp that very few atheists do this – or maybe you realize this and it’s just convenient for you to pretend that all atheists are raving monsters “screaming for religious blood”.