[Granny Bear]

Morning Granny, it's Football season!

I know!! I'm sad because I no longer have any babies playing. Have adopted a few though!!

I think you more than most on here know what kind of person I am because we have had several off site interactions.

I know you to be a very intelligent and caring young man. I would be proud to be your mother or grandmother.


I will try to touch on your points quickly.

1. Right vs Wrong - This is always a hard thing to explain to those who are not an atheist. Most Christians feel they get their morals from the Bible but I don't believe that is necessarily true. I believe right and wrong are a part of us from birth. Take my children for example. My wife (who believes in God and prayer) and I came to the understanding long ago that for our marriage to work we would not ridicule each others beliefs, nor would we raise our children under either banner. Even at early ages they displayed the basic knowledge of right and wrong. They realize they need to treat others how they want to be treated based upon their interactions and emotions. It's been amazing to watch two children with hearts of gold develop in front of my eyes.

I would LOVE to see some recent pictures of them!!
Now would it be fair to say that their feelings of right and wrong depend on the reactions of mom and dad? In other words you and your wife qualify what their actions are just by being mom and dad.
Think about it.


2. Reconcile Spiritual with Reality - this subject I tried to be vague on in my first post because its the one spot that my atheism can get a little on the offensive side. I'll put it this way and hope it is at least slightly understood. I could not reconcile why it was so imperative for a God who loves everyone to only accept those who have been saved or that a Vengeful God who was supposedly omnipotent and infallible from the Old Testament became the loving God of the new testament, to me it made the God I believed in fallible and that is where I began to question things. (The elaboration on this would take paragraphs)

Believe it or not, I think I understand where you're going. I'm not going to delve in this any deeper either because it leads to denominationalism and theology. I don't think I would be able to type enough!

3. Judgmental Christians - I agree with you 100% on this one. It's the same on my side of the street. Angry attacking atheists give us a bad name and often get us a negative association. Just like ISIS and the 9/11 terrorists give Islam a bad name. All sides have their radicals and they give us all a bad rap.

I have no problem agreeing with this. I had Muslim friends who were explaining Ramadan to me. I was shocked!! Based on what they said to me, it was something that everybody would've benefitted from doing. In the end, they left their home because of community ill will. This couldn't have been more wrong.

I understand how it comes off, but it's a real situation, that happens every friday night across America. Type in "ACL God has plans for me" on Google. Prayer isn't going to prevent that injury from happening. It was the wrong cut, landed funny, etc.. Do I care if Bell County says a prayer, No, but like Granny said if a group of Muslims(Like in the Dearborn Football Team Documentary Film) visited Bell County, and asked to pray, I imagine some people would be offended.

And herein lay my point. It would offend a lot of Christian people, but it would not matter. We are forced to be accepting of anybody, anywhere, anytime, etc. However, if as a Christian group, WE asked to be accepted, then we usually get your kind of garbage.

I LOVE talking to AtlPirate.....he's informative without being snide or asinine.