From: "Roland"
Subject: Re: I disagree with you

You do not use an open mind obviously when studying Christianity.

That is a serious charge to make and I would have appreciated it if Roland had bothered to try to support it. Curiously enough, he didn’t bother. Why do you suppose that is? Probably because he couldn’t have actually supported it with any kind of serious argument. Roland‘s position here is essentially based upon the premise that unless I agree with Roland, then I can’t be working with an open mind.

That’s an attitude I experience all too frequently. Christians, in particular fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, don’t allow for the possibility that another person might arrive at a different conclusion than they through honest, fair, and reasonable means. If anyone disagrees with them, it can’t be an honest mistake. Instead, it must be due to some sin: they are lying to others, lying to themselves, being unfair, being hypocritical, etc.

However, I find most of what you write completely ludicrous and not based on fact.

I receive claims like this quite often as well. Roland doesn’t even try to support his claim — which is also common when it comes to this sort of thing. I don’t quite understand why, but people who write to disagree and complain never seem to realize that their disagreements and criticisms would be taken far more seriously (OK, I’ll be honest, they might be taken seriously at all) if they simply took the time to support their allegations.

You state that there is no definition of atheism rather that there is only a disbelief in God or gods. If that is true, then atheism cannot be defined.

Another problem with many of the complaints I get is that those complaining often don’t take the time to be very accurate in what they are complaining about. If someone is going to disagree with me, it would make a lot of sense to disagree with something I have actually written rather than some random nonsense the critic has made up.

In this case, Roland writes that I have said “there is no definition of atheism,” but that hardly credible. I have several detailed pages exploring the definition of atheism. How could I do that if I didn’t think that a definition existed. The definition of atheism is disbelief in God or gods. It’s not a hard definition to understand, though it’s common for fundamentalists and evangelicals to mess it up.

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