Why do theists assume that we dont want to "Get along" when they dont look at the fights they have with other religions and even sects within their own religion.

We are just as human as theists and YES we do want peace, SUPRISE!

But in seeking that peace we dont need to sugar coat life and we dont need to use threat of arrest or war when someone offends us.

Worship of anything be it a celibrity, political party, or state, cult personality, or god ....worshiping these things sets the believer up to blind themselves to opposing views and leaves them without conflict resolution skills.

It is no different than worshiping a parent or sybling. "Your mother is cheating on your dad"........."NO SHE ISNT, TAKE THAT BACK OR I WILL BEAT YOU UP!"

That is what religion does to people. It sets them up to see others as against their hero.

Getting along is extreemly important to humanity. But the alpha male mentality from the 3 big kids on the block is not allowing for that. 

0. Atheism didn't start to organize immediately after 9/11. That was when Bush started his holy wars. It was after the substantial rise of fundamentalism in the Bush years that we started to fight back, and really only in the last year or two. And even as we organize and become more vocal, no atheists are preaching hate or violence, in sharp contrast to fundamentalist Christianity and Islam.

I'd agree that it is in poor taste to give the kind of scathing eulogies that Christopher Hitchens has given to Jerry Falwell, he really doesn't deserved any better, and Hitchens hasn't exactly been known for his tact.

1. You can't do terrible things in the name of atheism because atheism is not an ideology, it's a lack of certain ideologies. Bad people can be atheists, or course, but we have no holy texts, or common creeds that can be drawn upon to justify violence or bigotry. Religion, on the other hand, has many such sources, and they have been used repeatedly.

2. Although I appreciate his comment about how Christians act as if god is just obvious, the comment about atheists seems just wrong. I don't know any atheists who doubt that many theists truly believe the wacky things they believe. That isn't the problem. The problem is that it's just fanciful nonsense. But, as a former Christian, I am absolutely aware that it feels very real when you are in the moment.

3. Justice is a somewhat separate issue from morality, and some of the principles are fairly well fixed. Respect for justice may be a moral question, but cheating someone out of money by fraud is still unjust, because it undermines the idea of a fair trade, and there's not a deity in sight.

And his assumptions about my reactions to sexual situations are just flat wrong.

However, he is correct that the amount of moral overlap is substantial, because we all live in societies that set social norms. In fact, the overlap would by much less if Christians did manage to derive their morality from the Bible.

4. No dispute here, goodness is not dependent on theism.

5. The only point of view which I find offensive is the oppressive and controlling type. I don't care if people believe in fairies, or magic charms, except on the level of intellectual interest, but when religions start getting into politics, and start trying to enforce their scripture on the rest of us, I get mad. I'll engage anyone who wants to discuss religion in a reasonable and intelligent way, but their opinion doesn't offend me. I just don't agree with it, and if you can't bring a good case for it, I might get a little annoyed if you persist in trying to persuade me.

6. Honestly, I agree that both sides tend to exaggerate a bit, but there really are Christians trying to destroy science. That's not an exaggeration, they're trying to inject religion and the supernatural and all their preconceived dogma into studies on the origins of life, the origin of the universe, the history of this planet. Admittedly, there are lots of Christians who are not part of that, but there are some who really are, intentionally or not.

And I'm not really sure that Hard Gay is a good example of a typical Japanese person.

7. Meh, I dunno. Seems irrelevant. I don't pretend to be perfectly rational, and I don't know anyone who does. However, many of the things he seems to think are irrational are perfectly rational. Morality has a very rational explanation from evolution, talking about emotions using plain language rather than technical language is rational if you want to really communicate, and offering incentives to a brain which has no free will is rational in that the brain considers incentives in it's calculations.

8. Sure, focusing on the worst tiny minority is unfair and stupid. However, there is plenty of frightening stuff in the large percentage of Americans who believe the Earth is about 6,000 years old. And it is true that the Christians that advocate oppressing homosexuals enable the extremists who actually act on those beliefs.

9. He's way off here. Religion did not invent morality, it took natural morality and captured codified snapshots of it, freezing it like some ancient cultural fossil. Much of the danger that religion represents is in the preservation of anachronistic outdated moralities which should have been superceded.

And the notion that religion prevents people from being treated as objects is pure fantasy. All Abrahamic religions have a deep-seated misogyny, all have preached cruelty to outsiders and people who are unclean/unsaved/unrighteous, and some have endorsed slavery.

10. I don't knock on people's doors to promote atheism. I look to engage people on the topic, and show that we don't need religion to get the good things that people expect from it.