Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> writes:

> Well, not really; a fair number of the creationists reject scientific 
> principles.  Atheists tend to know a lot more about theistic religions 
> than those who practice them, IME, because they've often been raised in 
> one and then decided it's pants after years of careful study and 
> questioning - questioning that *often* is answered with "don't ask those 
> kinds of questions!"

My experience is quite the opposite: The self-proclaimed atheists I've
interacted with often betray their lack of understanding of
religion. They sound far more like people who read books that are, for
lack of a better term, anti-religion, than from observation of the
world, or study of a religion.

They also had a terrible tendency to generalize: They see something
silly in one sect in one religion, and they generalize like
crazy. 

Their rhetoric isn't helpful. They often ask religious people to defend
principles that those religious people don't always believe in, for
example. They didn't bother establishing whether the person they're
speaking to fits their mental model of a religious person. He merely
does, because he's religious. 

No doubt, there are exceptions. As a few milder atheists are at pains to
point out: "Just as their are all kinds of religious folks, atheists are
not as monolithic as they seem. The vocal set just happen to be assholes."

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