I don't think JuiceBox is helping his case by generally being more of a troll than a debater.
Still, I don't understand why some supporters of atheism(spilling over from the respect thread) here seem to believe that religious people expressing their views in public forums is inappropriate and unwanted interference while atheists expressing their views in public forums is paramount to some noble search for free thought. Of course, any person who switches atheism and theism in this case is equally mistaken.
Hitchens writes "God is not Great." Rick Warren writes "The Purpose Driven Life." One might conform more to your world view than the other, but they are both the same thing: public expressions and arguments in favor of the beliefs of the authors.
GinIchimaru_09 wrote...
It’s just like if a religious person said “I like to point out the reasons why I find religion plausible.” If this is your argument then I think it’s a little shaky. Atheists just want people to understand why they don’t believe as people who do believe what people to know why they believe so maybe they will “see the light” so to speak.
Exactly, they are the same thing, whether you choose to call it preaching, the search for truth, free speech, or whatever else. What you argue has no impact on the fact that you are arguing in a public forum.
Free speech allows people to express and argue for their beliefs in public. That is the way society(at least in the US where I live) is, and I am perfectly fine with that. If one's belief in something is so weak that merely hearing dissenting opinions is enough to shake the foundation of the belief, I think it is necessary to re-examine and either strengthen or discard the beliefs in question, depending on the results of one's thoughts and introspection.