No - poor writing on my part.
It’s sad we (USians) live in a country where presidential candidates have to show us their stamp collections to get elected.
(Love the analogy. It would be less necessary to make your point, if the common English term were “non-theist”, rather than the Greek-prefixed, less easily parsed “atheist”.)
“The new line of stamps from Brazil? TOTALLY NOT GETTING THEM! :mad::mad::mad:”
Nah, not militant enough.
As far as I can tell, these are the two ways to identify a militant atheist:
When (as per previous example) a Christian says, “God loves you,” and an atheist responds with, “There is no god,” he is militant.
… and …
When in response to no one at all an atheist states, “There is no god,” he is militant.
Ask any militant theist and they’ll agree with me.
And when an atheist complains about people trying to teach their particular creation myth as fact in a public school science class, well, that goes far far beyond militant. That’s pure Nazi. That’s super-Nazi.
Considering how the gods traditionally treat mortals they love, my reply to “God loves you” would be “Oh hell, anything but that!”
Thankfully, I’m an atheist and only have to worry about what a random, uncaring universe has in store for me.
Apropos of nothing, my 10 year old son just told me last weekend that one of his friends spent the better part of last year snubbing him because of his atheism.
Who are the intolerant ones again?
This reminds me how during a very bad time in my life, religious relatives (with the best intentions) would say something like “It’s part of God’s plan for you”.
Even if I believed in God, how the fuck is that any comfort? I’m to believe God planned this awful shit, and may have even more heinous shit in store for me, and this is supposed to help me feel better in some way?
“Well, there’s nothing you could do, that evil monster that controls the universe wanted it. We’re too weak to fight him, just be glad he didn’t give you brain cancer.”
…because he loves us.
We must consdier the possiblity that there is a God, but he doesn’t love you. In fact, he thinks you suck.
It’s even better if God doesn’t like you, but He can’t quite put his finger on why: “it’s not that you broke one of the 10 Commandments…, it’s just well, uhm. Look it’s not you it’s me, but I am not going to spend eternity with you hanging around.”
This made me think of the Louise Lasser character breaking up with the Woody Allen character in Bananas.
He: “Well, is it because you don’t love me?”
She: “No.”
He: “Oh, so you do you love me!”
She: “No, no I don’t. But it’s not that.”
You collect stamp-collection analogies. That’s not very metal, but very meta. I like it.
God loves you, you monster.