Quote:
Originally Posted by Urzu 7
There are other religions I like or am okay with, too. I'm pretty open minded. It is great to be open minded. Open minded people accept many people for who they are. There is a quote: "Your mind is like an umbrella, it is best if it is open". Being open minded is usually very good. There is another quote I came across once: "Don't let your mind be so open that your brains spill out". I'm accepting or tolerant of many religions, but not all of them. Also, I don't like atheism (I just don't agree with it at all), but I'm just fine with atheists. In fact, I've had a few atheist friends over the years (and I never pushed my beliefs on them), and then I have one good friend who is an atheist, and I just don't care that he is one. He's a good guy, I like him for who he is, and I'm glad he is the person he is. I'm a very spiritual person, so I used to have a prejudice against atheists in the past. Then a some point I realized that was no good and over time I've become much better with that. I overcame it, I just don't like atheists who are prejudiced against spiritual people and religious people and have a habit of challenging the beliefs and faith of believers, with no other intent other then to try and make their faith unstable or to make them lose faith.
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As an agnostic atheist myself, I'd have to echo the sentiment that the atheist community is quite a lot like the theist community. Just as certain religions have their fundamentalists, there are a lot of atheists who are just as uncritical and just hate theistic religions irrationally. Of course, another factor should be considered is that in primarily theistic societies, the atheist community would form but a small minority. As such, one might find that a larger portion of atheists tend to be nonconformists, which would mean that they would indeed be more critical minded.
One thing that some atheists need to understand is that, in my opinion, some beliefs should just be left alone. As some posts above have stated, people seek certainty in their lives, whether it be from sensory input, cold hard logic, or religious faith. Imposing your own belief on someone else is the worst thing you can do since beliefs are a manifestation of one's own subjective experiences.