Every so often a post will motivate me to remind people that there is a difference between a person, and a claim a person makes. And that there is a difference between human rights, which any decent person will agree with, and the SEPARATE SUBJECT, of being able to demonstrate a given claim as being credible.

Quite often, and not just at this site, but across the web, often people will take an attack on their claim as a personal attack on them. I've even seen atheists make this mistake.

Think about all the non theistic claims your friends or family or co-workers have made in your life. You have said to them "you got it wrong". Being "polite" about it, or being blunt and blasphemous about it DOES NOT change the fact that you think "they are full of it".

BUT in no way does that mean you hate the person. EVERYONE HERE at this site lives in a majority, in outside life, that do believe in gods, and or other claims.

WE all have family and friends and co-workers who make claims we find absurd. It would be impossible for us to function if we hated everyone who made claims we don't find credible and tried to isolate ourselves from the people we disagree with.

I would suggest to both the atheist and theist who are not comfortable with bluntness and blasphemy to go to websites with more strict rules or EVEN ON THIS WEBSITE put their debates in this section "Kill em with Kindness".

What is unreasonable is to set up a taboo out of fear of being offended. When ANYONE does that, including atheists,  it shuts down the debate and makes it a matter of protecting one's ego. And when people insist on doing that, even with strict rules on language, someone who is fragile will ALWAYS find something to be offended by, no matter how polite you try to be.

Kicking the tires of ANY CLAIM on any issue, not just theism, is how life gets tested. It is how absurdities like the earth being flat, and pseudo science like chronology and alchemy get debunked. Without kicking the tires humans would still be living in the caves.

I would suggest to BOTH the theist and atheist and anyone with a claim, instead of assuming hate when someone kicks your claim around, KNOW YOUR OWN COMFORT LEVEL, when visiting other websites besides like minded people.

I get ticked at atheists, for example, who come back here after visiting a Christian website acting shocked at their treatment there. What did you expect? And the same goes for visitors to sites like this. While some people and some websites are bigoted, not all believers hate you, merely because they falsely think you are going to burn in hell.

A good way to deal with disagreements FOR BOTH SIDES, is to not take it personally. And if you like the library. find a library type environment before posting. But don't demand that from everyone. Atheists are not all the same and neither are believers. We all have different comfort levels.

WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS AND WE/THEY AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN has family, friends and co-workers who have on subjects like politics, religion, history, science, trivial, mechanics, ect ect ect ect ANY GIVEN SUBJECT, we all have heard a claim from someone we like and thought to ourselves or said to them, "WTF?"

That is normal in life. We need to stop being afraid of the challenge and stop taking it personally when someone challenges us. If we never questioned set norms or set beliefs our species would still believe the earth was flat.