Letter to an Atheist Named Alice Rose

 This has been up since July of 08, it's now 1/15/10. This post remains the post popular on the blog and people continue to send in answers on it. I am just tonight answering comments made today on this post. I have no idea why it's so popular and Alice Rose never answered back. I guess the title sounds intriguing.


A few minutes ago an atheist put a comment on an old blog spot from way back in 12/7/07 or somewhere around that time.. Ordinarily I would just let her have her say and forget it because it was such an old piece. She will probably never look at my answer. For some reason the tone of it made me want to give a good serious answer. I tried to find her profile and could not, so I googaled her name, Alice Rose. I may have found her on my space but don't know, If so he's only about 16! I don't know what experiences she has had, but she's too young to be mean to. So I am going to give a serious nice answer, trying as hard as I can to be nice. I hope word gets back to this person.

Here are her comments. the piece she responded to was "Introducing Atheist Watch" my now defunct other blog. I did away with Atheist Watch because I found that watching for atheists to say hateful things made me more hateful myself.

Alice Rose's comments:

Atheism is about love of logic, not hatred of religion, my good sir.

Sure, there are a few individuals who are feed up with what my people are going through, but honestly who are you to say we're not good people?

Just because we don't believe this "proof" that there's a bearded sky daddy handed down from thousands and thousands of years ago doesn't make us bad. Bastardizations of the truth perpetrated by delusional(but I'm sure, very nice) people make us seem bad.

We're a hate group?
Is that so? when have I, this supposed member of a hate group harassed someone?

My name is AliceRose and I am a your typical peaceful Atheist.

Anyway, I hope you see the real connection between Santa and god.

Good luck to ya, Mr. MeanyPants.

Ok I think deserves a nice serious answer:

Atheism is about love of logic, not hatred of religion, my good sir.

none of the atheists that I deal with on message boards would say that atheism is about loving logic. they all says it's a lack of a belief, nothing more. So where does this idea come from that it's about loving logic? why is it that every time I use logic to argue for the existence of God atheists come out of the wood work to tell me that logic is no good, it can't tell us anything, we have to have empirical scientific evidence not logic?

Sure, there are a few individuals who are fed up with what my people are going through, but honestly who are you to say we're not good people?

I don't' know what you mean by "fed up with what people are going through?" Before I get to that I want to point out that I did not say atheists are not good people. I did not say atheists are a hate group. I don't know why you can't just repeat myw words accurately and fairly. I pointed out over and over again that I was speaking of a certain segment within the atheist community, which apparently you know is there.

why aren't you telling that segment to stop? why is it so hard for you to use peer pressure on something you know is right? you use peer pressure to humiliate and ridicule Christians. Why can't you use it to shut up the hateful segment in the atheist community?

Now when you say "what people are going through" you mean to say that religion is so bad and so oppressive that this is why the hateful segment is reacting? But I was an atheist. I was fed up with the oppressive aspects of Christianity. But I didn't go around exhibiting lies and ridicule and hurting religious people's feelings and refusing to try to understand what religion is about? Don't you think if you are going to criticize something you should at least try to understand it first?

There is a huge body of scientific evidence that proves that religion is real good for you, much better than unbelief in terms of less depression, more awareness, self actualization, better adjustment, being positive, enjoying life and better health. People don't listen to that. They don't know about it. All the harping atheists do on how bad religion is is just setting up a straw man argument. Straw man means you construct an argument and pretend your enemy gave it. You construct in such a way that it's easy to attack. The problem is straw man arguments never really do justice to the other side or the case they could make. Atheists are just ignoring the most intelligent and rational side of religious belief and pretending like it's all like the extrmee forms of fundamentalism.

Just because we don't believe this "proof" that there's a bearded sky daddy handed down from thousands and thousands of years ago doesn't make us bad. Bastardizations of the truth perpetrated by delusional(but I'm sure, very nice) people make us seem bad.

First of all I never said atheists are "bad." Secondly, I was never talking about all atheist and made that quite clear every time. Now you show me from what you say that your basic view is that belief is a delusion and that your understanding of religion is about a big man in the say. Now this is a good example of what I mean by "straw man argument." IF you don't know that most religious belief is much more sophisticated then that, then you don't know enough about tit to be criticizing it. You should study it more. you should especially look for the theologians, the real thinkers, not just the common man on the street. If you know better and you are just using hyperbole then you are setting up a straw man argument. In either case you are not being fair. Anyone can attack the simplistic notions of ancient man, but yous should know that modern theolgoians at places like Oxford and Cambridge have sophisticated modern ideas of God. As for thinking that it's a delusion this is disproved by a host of empirical studies. Religion is proven not be connected to any kind of mental illness.

I think you are refusing to fairly study or understand religion. You want to criticize it because that's what's cool, thats' in, but it's not fair and it's wrong. You should study the best and most sophisticated version of it before you claim to know what's wrong with it.

I hope you consider what I said, you are always welcome to comment on my blog.