I think Dragoonster may be referring to me, SG regarding someone ignoring him. I won't give an audience to bigots... and anyone who tries to associate evolution or atheism with murder (via Nazis or communism or Ben Stein like lies) are bigots whom I ignore. I won't give audience to such hate speech so they can spin their delusion of the "evil atheist" versus whatever it is they imagine themselves to be. They have a right to their opinion. They don't have the right to inflict it on me.
I'm not a bigot, at least not towards what you think, and am a weak atheist and agnostic.
My ignore list inclusion was I think from the "faith leads to evil" thread, which I thought was a meritless idea. In the thread, two examples of evil from theism were given, slave-owners/traders and Andrea Yates. I didn't find the examples compelling evidence of anything and responded with an example of deist or agnostic/atheist slave-owners who found slave-owning immoral, but found their financial/social standing/needs more pressing. Also the history of religion as one that could change as society changes, just much slower and perhaps requiring a change in their interpretations. I think I also pointed out that perhaps today's immoral religious stance on homosexuality would change and in 100 years it would be a lot more tolerant. And for Yates I countered with Bundy, showing that nutcases can abuse and misuse anything as justification for being nuts, including atheism.
Somehow this makes me a theist apologist. Well I'm not, at least in the pejorative sense of "apologist", I'm a criticizer of illogical or generalized arguments from either side, and tend to argue with the side that's vastly outmanned in a given argument (unless the argument is faulty--if the theist is citing scripture or bad philosophy I'll ignore it, because there are plenty of others who'll poke holes in that nonsense). My goal is for the debate to be objective, and try to be objective myself. Maybe I should give that up and
just argue pro-atheism/anti-theism positions regardless of whether those positions are compelling?
Also in that specific argument I think it was based on Dawkins' description or extension of Hitchen's quote, and Dawkins himself said he wasn't interested in arguments by mass-of-misdeeds. As in comparing the overall harm done by religion to that of atheism or secularism (which is pretty well-documented as correct--much more evil has been done in the name of religion). I took that as meaning the argument would only be about the
inherency of faith leading to evil, which I again found faulty. Does atheism lead to evil? Of course not. It's completely neutral. Does theism? No, while not as neutral it can change itself according to social mores, and this has led to subreligions and offshoots. Or entire new religions because an old theist wanted a different morality but not give up his irrational faith. If theism led to evil I wouldn't expect it would be able to change as society changes, or as a single person's prejudices change to tolerance (or tolerance to prejudice in some cases).
Well, I think that's the story of how I became not a real atheist, a theist apologist, a lying theist, deluded, and a bigot. Funny, I don't feel any different.
I was there and the jerk took my chair...
