I remember reading about that a while back. The thing that surprised me more than anything else was that it was just one guy who was doing all of that. I’d always assumed the John 3:16 thing was just something people did at sporting events, like “the wave,” or taking off your shirt in subzero temperatures.
I want you to know I am wiping tears of laughter from my eyes and trying not to wake the household with my manic giggling!
I guess hell did freeze over.
I ran into this line of argument a few times, and it scares the shit out of me because it implies that if the guy asking the question didn’t believe in eternal punishment, *he *would see no particular reason not to murder me for the lulz.
I know, right? It’s such a window into the mindset of the person asking the question.
I actually made a weak pitting of the assholes who use the “OH GOD I WANT TO RAPE AND MURDER SO BAD BUT GOD WOULD PUNISH ME, THEREFORE I AM BETTER THAN YOU, ATHEIST, WHO DOES NOT FEAR GOD” bullshit.
You should just ask them the same exact question, since I doubt most people are afraid of actually going to hell.
Here’s what I mean. I think it’s in Tom Sawyer where Tom and Huck are standing next to a character who is lying (I haven’t read it in 30 years). Tom and Huck have a belief that if you lie, you get struck down by lightning. So they keep moving away from the liar and waiting for the lightning strike to happen.
Tom and Huck behaved as if they believed that lying = lightning strike. In my experience, most people (and I’m not just limiting it to Christians) don’t behave as if they believe that there is this book or books that lay out the only guidelines for avoiding eternal damnation. For starters, a lot of people don’t actually read the holy books of their own religion. You can’t tell me you believe that there is an eternal hell waiting to swallow people up when you don’t even take the time to read the guidelines for avoiding it.
So, turn the question back around. See if their behavior is consistent with this belief that there is some eternal damnation just around the corner, and if it isn’t, turn the question back on them.
That just sounds so wrong. It’s like bad porn.
I have coworkers whose cubicles are plastered with religious stuff. One had a bible on his desk the size of the Oxford English Dictionary.
I used to have a newspaper photo of the hotel room he was holed up in that day, with SWAT outside on adjacent balconies. The internet is failing me in my attempts to find it on-line.
There’s also the coworker who wants the radio turned to a religious station (either preaching or Christian music), and the one who wants everyone to attend a prayer breakfast/meeting before every workday, and the one who proclaims that s/he can do anything with God’s help.
Even if, given **MwaG’s ** assertion that theists who equate atheists with satanists are (to use the SDMB’s favorite word of 2009) “outliers,” it’s still common to see atheists as “angry at God.”
Not just at his fan club, but God Himslef.
What’s the difference between an obnoxious atheist and a non-obnoxious atheist?
"Did you know that Slithy Tove is an atheist?
"Why no I didn't. But now that you mention it, guess it makes sense."
(that’s Slithy Tove being identified as an obnoxious atheist.)
But maybe there’s hope: we can be lik teenagers were in the 1950’s, or homosexuals in the 1960’s: originally demonized, but after a few years, comprising a targeted marketing demographic; as well as the focus of sexual curiosity.
I’ll be too old for any of that when it comes. But, by virtue of my age, I do have the benefit of remebering when Christians demonized each other. Now, of course, they band together, and Fundamentalists, while they don’t agree with the pope, see a dirty joke at his expense as essentially at Jesus’s expense. A united front against the War on Christmas, rising secularism, any attempt to look at their bookkeeping, etc.
It wasn’t always like that. I remember the early 70’s listening to two little girls singing/trashing the ecumenical movement (at the 3:15 mark). (I now see that one of the girls went on to a prominent part on a 1990’s sitcom “Wings,” and was romantically involved with Danny Thomas’ son; from one of the US’s most liberal Catholic families.
So at least we atheists brought the Christians together: doing Jesus’s work that they were unwilling to do.
That was a weird song. I never heard of the ecumenical movement trying to bring Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus together with the Protestants, Catholics and various Eastern rites.
Some of this stuff borders on harassment. Can’t HR do anything?
I worked at a company once where the HR director was the one doing this sort of stuff. :eek:
Not quite as bad as Lynn described above, but definitely using her position to proselytize folks and promote her faith.
Oh, this didn’t happen all at one place, but yeah, it was usually the boss who wanted to have a prayer breakfast or meeting, or who wanted the radio on the Christian station.
Was it a personal radio? Because he was told he could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from 9-11.
Since when is 11 a “reasonable” volume?
Yes, I got the “Office Space” joke. And I morphed it into a “Spinal Tap” joke. So? 
I think their mindset on this point is best summed up in this passage from The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis: