"Do you think that he meant for the banter to only go one way?"

Did you? Sadly In My Experience, many do.



"I am a little puzzled by your implication that I advocated this. >>>'"The One Way, or the highway" method,<<< as I gave an alternative in the next sentence. I was inviting him to accept Jesus, I said if he could not do that, I was asking him to calm himself and not get so worked up about things he professes not to believe. Being a strident Atheist give one all of the drawbacks of having religion with none of the benefits."

Irrational self justifying nonsense. If YOU don't believe what YOU are demanding others believe, why insist on it? Why even say it? If I said "Go Thou and Jump off a Cliff" would you do it? Would you be somehow inhunman if you did not? Shall you be insulted just by my mere saying those words? Shall I say, "don't be offended, I was just funning"? Would you believe that I was just funning, or would you take that as 'proof' that I did not like you?


"As far as the beam in my eye goes, I just don't see it that way. "

Exactly WHY Jesus said that - because the one with the beam in his eye always knows it not! Q.E.D. :-)


"Self described Atheism is a fundamentalism and a religion. "

Only if the practitioner needs to convert the rest of the world (then they are acting no different from the 'Theists') - I know some atheists like that - they DO have a need to make the whole world 'right' and 'save everybody'

Not me mate. I don't CARE what sky fairy others believe in - it may actually make them behave socially nicely anyway - as long as they leave me (and my belief systems - or from their viewpoint 'non-belief' system...) alone and don't insult me by trying to 'convert' me and 'save my (non-existent) soul' in the way they specify. I regularly attend Buddhist 'feast-forums' , but occasionally I just have enough and walk away too. No one has to sit there endlessly when they have had sufficient of the insistence of 'the only way is this' 'discussion'. :-) Much of their pragmatic philosophy is very socially useful, but that doesn't mean that I go along with the whole sky fairy concepts of 'hungry ghosts', infinite dimensions that no one can see except the one individual that had 'exceptional powers'... and other mythical entities, etc....


"Strident athiests"

Haha! many rational thinkers (even Christians too!) object to the sort of sloppy smeared logic (jumbling, misusing, and mixing up poorly defined semantic concepts) so beloved of many Sky Fairy Culture thinkers - just because one objects to that sort of drivel doesn't mean that one is upset by the Sky Fairy nonsense itself, just that the misuse of Logical thought process in expressing it. So then they are attacked as 'evil muddled-headed non-believers' - 'just another atheist'! "

Banter away ... Strident atheists are just as objectionable to me as strident theists ... :-)