"I forgive you Jim."
A convenient - is somewhat arrogant back-door for you and your buddies away from dealing with the real issues which you have studiously avoided.
You may have meant it as a joke, but it's an attitude I've encountered throughout my life.
I know very few atheists who seek to impose their views on believers, but we now live in a world that has become extremely dangerous because of religious intolerance, by differing religious groups.
Some time this year, following the tragic death of a young woman who died through a hospital refusing to end an unviable pregnancy because "this is a Catholic country", Ireland will (hopefully) hold a referendum into whether these and other such circumstances should allow terminations. It is just possible that, should a reasonable and humane decision be arrived at and should the church (not to mention the howling and menacing mob of 'pro-lifers' (sic)) be resisted, Ireland will, with one mighty bound, take a flying leap into somewhere in the middle of the 20th century.
The tragic irony of all this is that any such changes will only have been made possible by the revelations of decades, possibly centuries of clerical sexual abuse of children by supposedly celibate old men who have taken it upon themselves to tell us how to live our lives.
Militant atheism my arseum.
Jim Carroll