I was trying to say me calling him on his bigotry is and was entirely unrelated to my self-identifying as a follow of Christ and his being an atheist. One has no bearing on the other, and if I failed to make this point before, it should be known I would’ve called anyone on that sort of nonsense and their use inflammatory language, which was fueled by what I consider learned ignorance. He simply taught himself to be intolerant of a subset of the human populace as a whole, and acted in that mindset with an intent that is in no way associated with love or anything that you KNOW stems from love.

We will not ever agree that excessive rudeness doesn’t and shouldn’t be labeled as bigotry, but that is not because of anything you said at any point in our conversation. I meant what I said in my note on FB about love, love LOVE, and I am upset at myself that you might have actually strained your eyes in our futile attempts at marrying our defining of a word and what constitutes it. If that is indeed the case, please rest your eyes and relax and rest yourself. Getting me to agree, or vice versa, isn’t worth straining or stressing our bodies over.

Get back to me at my listed email if you’d like. I am interested in finally talking with a self-defining atheist who is willing to shed some light on what that atheism really is.

-Eric

I guess I should have been more clear. We atheists have the same emotional resources, ability to recover, to withstand adversity. It even FEELS as though it comes from an external source, at times.

The difference is the interpretation. The story we tell. Rather than saying Jesus or God or the Holy Ghost is the source of this strength, I say that the human psyche has a mysterious way of bearing up when you think you cannot go further.

It is philosophical narcissism to imagine that just because a book or your stories tell you that your personal resources emanate from God, that they actually do. Or that you possess them and nonbelievers do not.

That is the point.