Little Hawk, your problem--and we talked about this before--is that you are a fundamentalist at heart. You are simply unable to accept an atheist or agnostic position. Whenever it is expressed, you become incensed and unable to deal with it in an intelligent manner. Let's take a look:

"But here's what I really think about it. People who start provocative, useless threads like this one should be doomed to eternal harassment by people exactly like themselves, but with precisely the opposite outward beliefs! Judgmental, self-righteous pests with a zeal to convert, in other words."

What is useless about someone expressing an opinion that there is no god? Nothing. It's a perfectly legitimate topic to post about if he wished to. There's no rule here that says he can't. You have NO RIGHT to berate someone this way. You do have the right to stay the fuck off the thread if the topic is of such little interest to you as you claim.

But it is of intense interest to you, isn't it? You CAN'T deal with people expressing an atheistic opinion. And your first resort is the incredibly childish "Oh I used to be that way when I was young and rebellious but not anymore" Translation: Only someone immature and needing attention is an atheist. Let's take a look:

"Amos, no, I haven't gotten around to reading Mr Dawkins yet. Why? His general premise (going by what I hear about him) just doesn't interest me enough to bother looking into it. There are a lot of other things I'm more likely to read before I get around to reading him. I mean, hell, I went through the "religion is all a bunch of crap" mindset when I was a teenager...and that was a long time ago. I think I've outgrown such crass and prejudicial attitudes, hopefully."

You have no idea what Dawkins has written and you don't care. You so outgrew this long ago and are so much more mature than people who express Dawkins' point of view. You are a pathetic little man and that should be your true moniker--Little Man. I berated you in private about this attitude of yours and you seemed to stop for a while but now you are back at it again full throttle. The arrogant one is you. The one who contributes nothing but judgmental bullshit is you.

You know this, so what you do is project that onto people who do not measure up to you oh-so-mature "I was blind but now I see" attitude.

Now let's examine your amazing self-righteousness in all its glory:

"Seriously....I know any number of nominal Christians who are against smoking and against the tobacco industry. I know a lot of Christians who DON'T think abortion is a bigger problem than the sale of tobacco."

Yes, let's introduce useless anecdotal evidence in an literally incredible, transparent, lame attempt to once again make your pronouncement that those who do not share your views of religion are arrogant and condemanatory.

"Get serious, man."

I am serious, man.

"Your efforts to pretend that you are not tarring a whole lot of innocent people needlessly with the same brush when you talk about what you call "Christians" are approaching an excess of satirical self-justification that would embarrass Jerry Lewis."

Even if this was true, I do not resort to the self-serving, arrogant attitude of "once I was like you, when I was young and stupid and needed something to rebel against but I grew out of it, so what's your problem?" As if anyone who is an atheist just hasn't grown up like you obviously have. You're a hypocrite besides being a complete asshole.

"Nothing can please someone with the kind of accusatory, condemnatory attitude you are bringing to this discussion."

The discussion is that there are no gods. You have no right to come here and act like I butted into some kind of Christian fellowship meeting. It is you who busted in and it is you who have brought an accusatory and condemnatory attitude here and I might add--VERY ARROGANT asshole attitude. Your whine comes more from the fact that I--someone whose views of religion you are unable to intelligently tolerate--made a suggestion to Christians that is actually very practical and that's what bugs you. How dare I--a mere little atheist bug--suggest something to Christians that you and they know they should have been doing long ago instead wasting time trying to hijack the republican party to push a shameless, self-serving agenda. They doesn't bug you, though, because at least they're not atheists.

>>It wouldn't matter what "Christians" did or didn't do, you'd still be bitching about them.<<

And it wouldn't matter what atheists do or don't do, you'd still mouth off your idiotic arrogant bullshit to them because you do it in every single post on the subject. The proof is that we've had this discussion before and you are still doing it. Now let's go back to your first insolent statement and see it for what it is:

"But here's what I really think about it. People who start provocative, useless threads like this one should be doomed to eternal harassment by people exactly like themselves, but with precisely the opposite outward beliefs! Judgmental, self-righteous pests with a zeal to convert, in other words."

That's exactly what he got: YOU.