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Originally Posted by Frisky  I have no idea which astral plane I'm generating right now. But arent you also being critical of me, and which astral plane are you generating with that criticism right now?? |
I'm not suggesting that you ought not to be critical, or that you should remain silent when someone is behaving in a way that doesn't work well for you. And criticizing a particular person's behavior does not equal insulting and stereotyping an entire group of people -- or "most" of them -- and it doesn't have to disrespect the person who is doing the behavior, as insults and stereotypes tend to. What I intend to generate with my criticism of what I see as your insulting stereotype of atheists is
a stand for courtesy: that I'm not going to let such insulting stereotypes go unremarked upon, anymore than I would a racial joke or slur.
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But I see your point, I will digress and say only the atheists I encountred were highly condescending and arrogant. I'm sure there's plenty of intelligent, nice ones also. Perhaps they are in the majority as well??
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If you go around asserting that atheists are highly condescending and arrogant, I think many atheists are going to respond to you in a way that occurs to you as highly condescending and arrogant. By making that judgement, you tend to powerfully create a reality filled with highly condescending, arrogant atheists.
It's kind of like people who say things like: "Why are all the men I meet such jerks?!" or "I prefer to be friends with men rather than women, because women are so catty and b*tchy and petty, and only want to talk about shopping." In these people's evaluations, that occurs as reality -- really, that's what they really do see when they look at the men and women they encounter. Is it The Truth about men and women? Well, it's THEIR truth -- it's how things really are in their model of the world.
So, do you think you might get different results in your survey of atheists if you were to do, say, a 30 day trial of generously listening to atheists and really understanding their positive purpose? Do you suspect that if you were to use a presupposition that atheists are cool, you might be more attractive to cool atheists? (I'm not suggesting you do a 30 day trial, by the way; only asking you to speculate about how your attitude skews your results.)