Wow. It's amazing to see such anger and hate from someone professing to spend their life on charity and love.

First,
I never said my post would change the world, feed orphans, cure cancer,
give peace to the Middle East, or make the world dance. If that's what
you expect out of posts, I bet you are a very disappointed around
Revelife and Xanga. I popped over to your blog for a second, and I have
to say that your posting of a Nickelback video and quoting proverbs
while attacking atheists didn't inspire me to convert to Christianity
and give all my belongings to starving children. Should I attack you as
voraciously as you attacked me for that?

In the very first
paragraph of my post I pointed out that I wasn't attempting to disprove
the Bible or your religion, but simply point out something that means
it is not 100% true word for word. If you find out that Matthew got a
couple begots wrong, should you abandon charity work and doing good
deeds? Not at all. That wasn't a point I was making in the least, and
your strawman and personal attacks against me are completely unfounded
and harmful to the point you seemed to want to make: atheists are
selfish because we have no divine accountability, while Christians are
selfless because you know when you die you will be judged.

But what about atheists like myself and Guru_on_the_Hill
who do good deeds dispite not expecting a divine reward or fearing an
everlasting punishment? I spent a summer in Juarez, Mexico building a
home for a family of eight. I opted out of a possibly lucrative life in
academia to get my teaching degree, which I plan on using in inner city
schools. I hold the door open for people. I'm a pretty decent guy who
happens to be an atheist. I mean, congrats on all the wonderful things
you've done for people. Keep them up. But know that religion isn't the
only reason to do these things.

You say you've posted this dozens
of times and only got one atheist who "thought about" doing something
nice. Now you've gotten two responses from people who have done some
genuinely good things in their lives. Will this change anything for
you? If so, then this whole argument was worth it. I hate getting that
knee-jerk reaction to me being an atheist. It's Christians with your
mindset that jump me late at night and pummel me out of "Christ love."

You
see, your prophocy failed. No one has responded with a "fuck you." Not
all atheists are the monsters you make us out to be. Most of us don't
even eat babies.

I find it terribly ironic that after spouting
paragraph after paragraph of hate-filled diatribe, you sign that we
should join you and love one another. I hope the irony isn't lost on
you.

Please, please respond to this. I want to know if a single word of this impacted you in the least.

What an idiot.

That was seriously a response?  Wow... I don't even know where to begin, I thought it was a series of rambling comments by different writers till I reread it.  I appreciate the clarity with which you replied. 

Did that response even have anything to do with your post? I really don't think so.

@Garistotle - well akshuly the whole jesus = sex thayng iz pretty common wun may go thru eny xtian hymnal & ryte after the hymn tytlez "under the sheets with jesus" evry kid knoze that gayme but evin mor so the xtian mystiks hava relayship to jesus/gawd that parallels the sexual xperience two prime xampulz ar john of the cross & theresa of avila tho ther ar meny utherz & over the past 2000 yrz well therzza virtual library fulla xtian arguably mostly catholik erotic lit & summa itz rather gud reedin

I'm an Agnostic, and honestly I've recently been finding Atheists as annoying as I usually do Christians (bombastic ones, anyway). I think this person went about their message in the entire wrong way. If he/she would have just left most of the bottom half out, and wouldn't have been so dick-ish in the top half, maybe it could have become an interesting debate. Unfortunately, as tends to happen in all religious debate, (s)he opted for the ad hominem attack. I like the article you submitted, it's a shame that most Revlifers won't really understand what you're trying to say, and will simply attack you. I always tell myself not to post things on religion, because I always just feel angry when I read the comments, but then I end up doing it anyway, like yesterday haha. 

@UTRow1 - [Also, GL, you forgot the obligatory "these
people are probably batshit loons that aren't representative of most
moderate Christians..." disclaimer. I am suprised that you haven't been
accused of painting all Christians with the comments of these people
yet, because it happens pretty much every single post.]
I made sure that I had that big paragraph long disclaimer at the top of my original post, and still people would respond with "so there's a tiny mistake, do you think that proves there's no god?" *sigh*

@YossariansWingman - [I'm an Agnostic, and honestly I've recently
been finding Atheists as annoying as I usually do Christians (bombastic
ones, anyway).]
I can appreciate that, and I know quite a few cases where I feel the same way.

@Mangonese - Seriously? Personal attacks, broad generalizations, and general hate-mongering are not proper debate techniques.

@AibellFaeire - No, not in the least.

@Ro_ad808 - Thank you, I did my best not to get extremely pissed.

I think the entire religious debate is the grossest waste of time and thought in the history of mankind.  Amen!

Wow...at first i thought that was a whole bunch of different comments. Took me a few minutes to realize that i misread your opening sentence where you state it was ONE of the comments you got. And wow, what a comment! It's Christians like that that bother me. Ones that can't seem to accept that there are people out there who believe different things, and who lump certain types of people together rather than looking at them as individuals (in this case, considering all atheists to be uncaring jerks). I don't even know what to say to this person. I'm sorta flabbergasted (love that word!).

On another note, Saved is a fucking hilarious movie! We watched it at a friend's house and laughed our asses off so hard that we just had to buy our own copy! It's fabulous. 

I liked that comment- it had spunk and fire! I don't think debating religion is a waste of time or thought, firstly because it is fascinating to speculate about our surroundings and our placement in it. Secondly, because it is like any discussion of culture and humanities, be it music, movies, or literature- yeah it may have no practical value to our or someone else's immediate survival, but it's supa fun, kills an afternoon nicely, and is part of what makes it worthwhile to be alive in the first place.

The reason you won't see people doing charity work in the name of atheism is because it is rarely communal, and when it is, only through indirect and more difficult environments like xanga and other websites, where people are physically far away from each other. I tend to think that a lot of aspects of Christianity people appreciate and find rewarding have nothing to do with religion- it has to do with belonging to a group. And it's hard to find a group that doesn't do charity work, even seemingly unrelated groups like the Blues Society in my city and my library's book club do fundraising, collect canned goods, etc. Like those groups and that entire post, it's not about religion or religious ideas, it's about people. And forgive me for partially derailing the atheist good deed train here, but I also think an admittedly selfish isolationist worldview comes with the territory of being an atheist. Of course we all know correlation doesn't equal causation, conditions leading to our behavior and philosophy towards other aspects of life also lead to our atheism. And those conditions probably only exist while a very conservative, religious outlook is mainstream- for example, actually rejecting religion or your upbringing is a pretty anti-social act. 

So who wants to organize some sort of godless but goodhearted (or other crappy pun-esque title) charity thing via xanga? I would if I knew how lol.

The bit about urinating on budha giving this commentor a hard on was um... coming from the abundance of Christ's love?

I commented a bit. :D I don't care for anything about the Bible. The Bible had me at hello. Does this mean I don't want to be accountable? LOL

this is a waste of time

you guys are out of touch with reality if you think these peoples' ideas are completely stupid and worthless, meaningless.

honestly your opinions seem to be based on regional conflict of two different groups of people (religious and not) that have pissed each other off over the course of your lives

scanning the comments and the general tone of this entire thing is condescending (even the Christian's post

reading debates about atheism always irritates me now because it always sounds the same.
and i used to be very atheist

mocking people for emotions. meet a medium if you think the afterlife doesn't exist.