andrel wrote:
> I think you'll find that there are a lot of 'atheists' that have studied 
> the bible and other holy books in more detail than your average 
> minister. They won't consider that a waste of time themselves.
> 

Yeah. As an example, PZ Myers is one of the most unappologetic atheist 
science bloggers around, and at this point he has so many copies of the 
fracking Bible in his house that he has to throw some out once in a 
while to keep space on his shelves for other *useful* books. Why? 
Because, despite having grown up with one, and making the mistake of 
actually reading the damn thing (a mistake that most preachers never do, 
unless in a group, so they can convince each other it makes sense), 
pretty much every evangelical that ever shows up to "refute" his science 
sends him a copy to this place of work, on the insane theory that no one 
else has ever "thought of" sending him a Bible to "convert" him to 
religion... During 'Cracker Gate', in which PZ dared to challenge the 
legitimacy of the idea that the life of a college student was worth 
"less" than a Euchrist, more than a few of these people also suffered 
what has become known as "Fatwa Envy", and sent him copies of the Koran, 
daring him to also desecrate that. One wonders at these people's reading 
comprehension, or just general blindness, given that the image that 
started all of them attacking him had several pages out of Richard 
Dawkin's book, an euchrist *and* several pages out of a Koran, in a 
trashcan, covered in his used coffee grounds, and pieced through by a 
rusty nail. No idea how many morons sent him copies, but not one of them 
ever read the original article, understood what was being protested, or 
had a damn clue that he had "already" desecrated a Koran as part of the 
protest of place *any* supposedly "holy" object higher than human life.

And, that isn't even mentioning copies of numerous other religious works 
he owns, and has read, and had his, also atheist kids, read.

Truth is, almost universally, the only atheists that have "never" read 
the Bible at all, are rejected by atheist communities because a) they 
make stupid arguments, b) prove not to know what they are talking about, 
c) fall for other stupid BS, d) are obviously angry or confused, and 
didn't reach their point of view by learning anything at all, and e) 
almost always "convert back" the moment some crisis pops up in their 
lives, and some religious person is nicer to them for their irrational 
thinking, demands for the universe to be nice to them, and disinterest 
in sound advice, than all the atheists they latched onto, thinking it 
made them look cool to be one (kind of like fake Goths, or like the 
"plastic hippies" that they used to talk about in the 60s-70s, who only 
showed up on their days off to "pretend" to be one of the culture.) Fake 
atheists, that don't get there honestly via understanding and a true 
desire to learn, are not going to get much sympathy, especially after 
they prove unwilling to learn or understand. We might be willing to show 
them the way to find a real understanding, but when it became obvious 
that all they where is someone "playing at it", you can be quite sure 
our reaction to them would be the same as someone showing up to "help" 
at a church fund raiser, for the sole purpose of pretending to care, 
while pocketing all the money they took in for themselves.

If you don't know how other atheists got to their conclusions, you are 
not going to be hand held, just pointed to sources, and one of the 
"first" things we **ever** say to anyone professing to side with us, if 
they seem ignorant, is, "Try reading the Bible honestly, cover to cover, 
without someone 'helping' you interpret it, then read some stuff from 
other religions too. That is how most of us lost all faith in it."

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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