I will forgive all of them completely, but only if they believe that I am 6'8" tall, can fly like superman and richer than Bill Gates. I refuse to show anyone any evidence for this. If you believe it, someday I will send you $20 million. If you don't one day I will come to your house, kick your ass and shit in your mouth. Once I have done that I will continue to do it once a day for the rest of your life. Even if you believe me then it will be too late. Oh yeah, I can also read minds so don't just pretend to believe.

 Your invisible friends sound nice. I (personally) feel that I have nothing to forgive you, or other Christians for. I haven't been offended, only frightened by the political power of groups who believe in (sometimes competing) invisible friends.

We all do irrational things. I certainly have. You're forgiven.

I would suggest that it's almost as unlikely that anyone with logic training could convince you that you're making a No True Scotsman fallacy, and that this whole line of reasoning is complete bollocks.

Who's that leave?  Don't you know that any idea has to be defended if it is to be believed?  So who's going to defend your god if he won't do it himself and you won't?

So you have to believe in him to have the knowledge to believe in him.  Really awesome.  You're a mental giant, clearly.  If you care to respond, tell me truthfully, how much formal training in logic have you had?  Philosophy?

And arrogant and pushy and authoritarian.

Like much in your life, you've decided to believe that which makes you feel better as opposed to that for which there is evidence.  If you'd read without blinders for a while, you'll find that the reason we founded this site is to help people learn to think rationally.  Anger and bitterness are quite different.  We are angry (AND HERE'S WHY) about what theists do, but we're truly saddened by the extraordinary pain and suffering that people willingly inflict on themselves and others, and we're trying to help, both for your sakes and for ours.

Tell them to stop.  When they stop, I will forgive them.  I do not forgive that for which there is no repentance.

I, specifically, do not forgive people who continue to hurt others with no intention of quitting.

Forgiveness comes after repentance.  When theists apologize to me personally and change their ways, I will forgive them. 

Oh, and don’t get smug thinking that I’m wasting time holding onto bitterness or any of that shit.  I won’t give this letter another thought after I hit {Post Comment}.

Aaron- First let me thank you for your lack of condescending language, which I often hear from even the most apologetic Christians. Because I appreciate your non-condescending tone, I will reply in kind. I do not seek any forgiveness from Christians in particular, rather a specific contract with society that the values and interests of the atheist, the intellectual, and the intellectual atheist will be protected against the rival interests of movements with anti-intellectual values at their core, which more often than not use atheists and religious/ethnic minorities as scapegoats for national crises. You seem like a pretty smart person, so I hope you can see the difference here. I am far more concerned with the damage that irrational thinking in general does to society than whether my neighbor believes in invisible friends and their hybrid offspring.

This site is not about bitterness, anymore than a group of comrades venting about a shared frustration is about bitterness. I come here for solidarity. I come here to communicate with others who value science, reason, and progress over faith, and who are familiar with concepts like memes and the intricacies of modern evolutionary theory. I come here to chat with people who aren't afraid to self-identify as "militant" atheists, and who generally are less uptight and less conservative than most of the richarddawkins.net forum. So I have to argue with you there. This site is not about bitterness. It is about camaraderie, solidarity, and commonality, as well as a diversity of opinions (yes, we do have different opinions on things other than the almost certain non-existence of invisible friends in the sky). Yeah, so the motto is "Belief in God, We Can Fix That." It's a security blanket, pure and simple. We all need them. The only difference is that we think about it rationally. We don't personify or deify our security blankets. We recognize them for what they are.

Think about this. It can't do any harm.

-----FTD

That's quite a generalization. There are many people here who listen to the arguments they are presented before counter-arguing.

Tonight, I'm even one of them.

That's nonsense.

If you make the argument, it certainly is up to you to back it up. Who else do you think you can possibly shift the responsibility to?

Now, you can choose to not back up a claim you've made - but that's essentially the same as conceding that the claim is false.

What you've effectively said here is,

"The evidence that God exists is that I believe in him,"

...Or, perhaps more accurately,

"The evidence that God exists is that you could believe in him,"

'Belief' isn't any form of evidence. Many children sincerely believe in Santa Clause - is that sufficient evidence, in your opinion, that he is a real entity?

You also argue that God's cosmic nature somehow puts him outside of our ability to explore and define. If that true, how can the Bible do just that? Or how could anyone have ever gained enough knowledge of him in the first place to form concrete beliefs about him?

...And the spread/enforcement of ignorance, the blatant hypocrisy, the malicious deceit, the targeting of children for easy indoctrination, the breeding of conflicts...

The list is long indeed.

Ridiculous.

While I would applaud the destruction of the Church institute, it would not somehow 'fix' the notion that it's pefectly sound reasoning to blindly accept outrageous claims. I'll note that no formal structure is needed to compel muslims to strap-on explosives in a bid to secure a ticket to paradise.

It is not. The root of this site is grounded in the notion that scientific exploration and critical thinking are titanically more important to our understanding of the universe than any ancient tradition could ever dream of being. We intend to demonstrate the important of evidence to support claims, and why 'faith' is an empty concept. 

No dice.

First, you've asked me to forgive a phantom. I don't offer forgiveness to those any more than I thank them for my accomplishments.

Second, you've asked me to forgive to a group of people I have no respect for. I'm not as outspoken, angry or passionate as a lot of the wonderful folks here, so I hold my tongue when I'm around them (or just generally try to avoid them where possible) - but to ask that I just say, "...Ah, whatever. We cool,"?

Forget it. We ain't cool. If one of them decides to demonstrate a willingness to let go of that ignorance and grow, and then offers a genuine apology? Then we talk about fogiveness.