Thanks, Joe, for not closing the thead. This fight is, to those of us fighting it, critically important.

Let people think we're silly - that's fine, after all, most atheists think believers are silly.

But many of us also know that *blind* faith is also very, very dangerous. And many, many of us think that the time for "respecting" dangerous ideas is past - this includes speaking up when you hear remarks that are racist / sexist / homophobic or promoting other cruelties and bigotries explicitly permitted if not deliberately encouraged by Scripture / disbelieving of demonstratable reality when such demonstrations conflict with their personal faith / and so on.

The reason we laugh at these foolish faithful, which is NOT everybody with faith so untwist your knickers, you others, is that the effects of such foolishness are so very, very tragic.