barnbuddy, I think there was a bit of naïveté in the other thread that we could just waltz into an internet forum and basically end the debate for all humanity with a few posts.
I exaggerate, however I can see how some of the posts from "our side" would have come across that way to believers.
The question itself is complicated, but having the debate is even more so. Rather than berating them, I prefer to have a dialogue with believers in the hopes of convincing them of the atheist position, and at the risk of being convinced myself to change my views.
I only get "militant" about it, when a person goes beyond belief and tends toward theocracy: in other words, when they advocate some kind of special respect or privilege for religion compared to other ideas in the public sphere, or when they want to make public policy conform to their spiritual whims.
It is well known that the internet mutes the subtleties of emotion, however even accounting for that, people feel entitled to have others share their emotions on matters of religion, and it affects their capacity for civilised debate. In most cases however an ordinary discussion is possible. People respond to ideas rather than people, and the conversation moves ahead.
However, even just recently I've been accused in one outburst of being a nazi eugenicist fucking hero narcissist - in a no flame zone - simply for disagreeing that knowledge and reality somehow depend on who you are rather than what is real - an assertion that is itself as ridiculous as it is racist. You maybe felt like a bit of a rough ride, but to be fair we usually do hold ourselves to a standard well above Godwin's Law.
The trickiest part of the debate is getting some religious people to be aware that there is actually a debate. It is much better here now than even just a few years ago. Atheism was often dismissed out of hand by people who clearly had no idea of the basics.
Atheism was confused with anti-theism, apostasy, or most frequently and hastily,
and predictably, merely a crude, willful and ignorant misunderstanding of the obviously true message of X religion.
Fortunately we now have some traction, some standing in the debate. And for merely not accepting that theistic theories are either intuitive or obvious, we take a lot of unnecessary flak. However as I said, we're getting somewhere.
This sort of thing helps:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10677488
We actually know a fair bit about religion/faith etc. We're atheists not because of religious ignorance, but because of knowledge of theism. And we're here because it turns out we have something to contribute to the conversation. And we're here because it
is a conversation: we're skeptical of religions, but we're even skeptical of our own atheism. So far, very few theists have ever accepted the invitation to explain theism to us or entertain seriously our objections. To do a proper job of that would involve opening their own beliefs to an uncomfortable scrutiny, and an uncomfortable nakedness next to naked atheism. The retreats are often and obvious.
But the discussion rolls along
