As most of my regular readers are aware, I receive a lot of email from visitors to this site. Much of it is from these regular readers, but a good bit is from those who stumble upon the site and take offense to its content.
Some of these people hurl some pretty vile invectives at me, as though I'd done something directly to them, rather than simply voice my opinions. Others just tell me I'm going to burn in hell. Still others politely tell me I'm misguided and that I'll be fine if only I open my heart to Jesus.
These are the standard types of contact I receive. Every once in a while, though, I receive communication from a theist that is polite and engaging. I really enjoy those. It gives me the opportunity to discuss the atheist point of view with a theist, to show him or her that we're not the evil, Satan-worshipping, child-molesters that so many think we are.
I'm currently engaged in an ongoing conversation with one such gentleman. And the other day he asked me to do something as a favor to him.
I don't know how many visitors here have explored the rest of Cardigan's Corner, but one of the more popular sections is the Bumperstickers page. Here you'll find my personal favorite bumperstickers, and many of these are a bit harsh toward religion, as you might imagine. Some of them, in fact, are downright rude. (I'm sure you've all seen the one that says, "My kid beat up your honor student." If read literally, it's rude. But if taken lightly, it's funny. Thus it is with some of the bumperstickers I have that are "rude" toward religion. They're funny if you don't take them seriously.)
This gentleman's request was that I remove these "distasteful" bumperstickers from the site.
My response to him was:
I'll remove them when the religious stop spouting their hateful rhetoric against others. I'm sorry you find them distasteful, but as I said about the Attic: I'm just pushing back.When there are no more bumperstickers that say: "National Atheists Day: April 1st" ... When placards saying "God Hates Fags" are no longer held up at the funerals of homosexuals... THEN I'll consider removing them.
My point to the bumperstickers is not to offend for the sake of offending. It is to make people think. When I repeat a sentiment there that is rude to religion, my hope is that people say, "Gee… why would anyone say such a thing?" And then actually think about it. Maybe they'll try for just a moment to see religion from another angle. The religion category in the Bumperstickers section is, therefore, sort of like a Reader's Digest version of The Atheist Attic, only ruder and funnier.
Okay, I realize that these hopes are really wishful thinking, but still… I try to remain optimistic. I try to think that these people can be saved from their own dogma.
Maybe one day I'll be proved right.
Postcript, two years later...
As it happens, I never again heard from the gentlement to whom I sent the above email. Several months of polite correspondence ended with the above exchange. Apparently, he didn't agree with my sentiment and chose not to continue writing to me.
Ah, well. So it goes.
