She Prays Atheist's
Words Will Strangle Him
Gary Poore
From: Gary Poore
To: Positive Atheism
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 12:11 AM
Subject: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Cliff:
I've spent the long shank of the afternoon reading your original column, You Intellectually Dishonest Thinkers, and your exchanges with "Bruce," in reference to this column.
After running through the usual array of falacious arguments, "Bruce" seems to have finally given up after making his 17th posting. Actually, he had already started recycling the same arguments. Thank you for your carefully considered responses to each of his arguments, even more-than-civil responses to his personal attacks on you; with your personal problems and unreasonable work load, it must surely have been trying, at times.
This whole long episode illustrates, over again, the style used by so many religious apologists: they never admit that you have honestly refuted a fallacious or unsupportable statement that they have made, and then they will recycle it in slightly different language.
Here is an amusing little experience that I recently went through:
As City Manager for a small town, I get to field all of the good citizens' complaints. One lady decided that I had falsely accused her of complaining about a neighbors dog (I have the daily log on which I recorded the complaint).
After several minutes of extremely crude denunciation of me, the Town, the Town Council, several generations of my family (wrong family), she finally said, "I am a good Christian lady, and I pray every day that words will hang in your throat, and strangle you". I took this to mean that she was praying to Jesus that I would strangle to death.
I've never even heard of this curse before, and believe it to be unique, even among "good Christians". At any rate, it has so far failed to have the desired effect.
Gary Poore
From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Gary Poore"
Subject: Re: PA-via_Positive_Atheism_Index
Date: Sunday, July 29, 2001 11:34 PM
The title came from the name of the newsletter I used to edit: "Critical Thinker."
When they cannot respond to your argument, the only thing left is to try to shut you up. Thus far in the West, we have had a 140-year reprieve from them being allowed to kill us. May this reprieve end up being permanent. And may that end up being because we were right, not simply because we deserve the right to speak. But, may we deserve the right to speak even if we are wrong. For this reason, I don't try to shut Christians up, but stand firmly for their right to speak and to practice their religion. It's a lot of work and is trying, at times, but this is the only way we get the right to refrain from practicing their religion in peace.
Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
people with no reason to believe
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