Reply #1: The old story Roy

[canetoad]

about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.

Read this very pertinent article weeks back. There was an atheist's convention in town. Now I don't believe there is a god/s/ess but I don't like to go around trumpeting or indeed labelling, myself as an atheist and am very familiar with the smug condescention that those with 'all the answers' often bring to the table.

Then again, I also don't believe that everything needs to be debated to death, who is right or wrong and who can win points by winning a snark fest. Much more peaceful life to keep quiet, not get myself worked up over what others believe and spend a lot of time wandering the river bank with a fat joint and my dogs.
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Atheists’ ridicule won’t win friends and influence people
March 16, 2010


Richard Dawkins addresses the Global Atheist Convention

If the meek really do inherit the earth, it won’t be the atheists who turned out in force in Melbourne at the weekend for what organisers believe to be the world’s biggest atheist conference.

It probably does mark in some way a coming of age for the militant atheist movement: they are visible and vocal, energetic and starting to become organised. They are gaining in confidence, which is no bad thing — but, as a couple of brave speakers observed, they would be much more persuasive if a touch less strident, a touch less dogmatic, a touch humble.

We are all enriched when people think through serious issues rather than inheriting parental or cultural assumptions, and when atheists advocate a view of a better society they must be taken seriously. By implication, of course, they must extend the same courtesy.

One lesson the atheist movement is learning, as the convention shows, is that it must broaden its appeal, reaching out to secularists, rationalists and others who share similar goals.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/blogs/the-religious-write/atheists-ridicule-wont-win-friends-and-influence-people/20100315-q9wj.html