Math Teacher Fired for Not Being Catholic Enough

A 27-year-old math teacher just got fired for supposedly being an atheist.

(You can bet my eyes widened when I read about that…)

But apparently, it’s all ok… because she worked at a Catholic school and they are allowed to do such things.

Before you dismiss this story because St. Edmond Catholic School in Iowa is a private, religious school and they have every right to fire non-Catholic teachers, read on. This is really a disturbing story and the headlines don’t do it justice.

Abby Nurre, 27, was hired last summer as an eighth-grade math teacher at St. Edmond Catholic School. In August, she responded to a Facebook members’ poll in which she was asked whether she believed in God, miracles or heaven.

In response, Nurre answered, “No.” Her answers then became part of her Facebook autobiography page, which was accessible only to her designated “friends.”

Somehow, though, the information ended up in the hands of the school officials.

Her Facebook page was accessible to designated friends and she had not authorized any students to access the page or the survey within, she testified.

On cross-examination, Paul Jahnke of the Iowa Catholic Conference pressed Nurre on her religious beliefs.

“Do you deny that you are an atheist?” he asked.

Nurre testified, “I am not an atheist.”

Jahnke asked Nurre why she responded to the Facebook survey by saying she didn’t believe in God.

Nurre replied, “I feel that opinions on such things constantly change.”

So she’s not an atheist… and she actually thinks about religious issues enough to doubt what she hears. The school wants none of this: asking questions is antithetical to what they teach.

But that’s not all. She also had the audacity to make a posting on Atheist Nexus:

In November, Nurre posted a comment to an online discussion forum, Atheist Nexus. In her post, she provided a link to a New York Times article that, as she described it, indicated the government had spent $2.3 million on prayer research in the past 10 years.

Five weeks later, she was called to the office of Monsignor Kevin McCoy and handed a letter informing her that she was suspended for making “atheist statements in a public forum.”

McCoy barred Nurre from school grounds. A few days later, without discussing the matter with Nurre, the school’s board of directors fired her for violating a policy that prohibits employees from advocating “principles contrary to the dogmatic and moral teaching of the church.”

Dogmatic is right. Moral? Hardly.

Notice she didn’t say that the article was right or wrong, good or bad.

She just posted it.

But she had to register for the site in order to do that and that was enough for the school officials to terminate her.

“It never occurred to me that teachers were limited in their professional and personal education to only church-approved sources of information,” she told the board.

“It’s unfortunate that the school fires teachers for getting information from nonchurch sources, then showing that information on another Web site without comment or opinion. … Teachers are taxpaying citizens and are entitled to think, be informed and take action.”

The board voted a second time to fire her. The school and Iowa Catholic Conference then challenged Nurre’s request for unemployment benefits.

Sorry, this is the Catholic Church — no thinking allowed.

This is absurd. Note how the entire article never once mentions her ability to teach math. We’re not talking about school officials who take education seriously. We’re talking about people who are more worried about how Nurre’s alleged atheism might appear to parents than the quality of education she delivers to the students. Maybe that’s what they think they have to do as a business, but if I were a parent, I’d never want my child going to a “school” like that.

There are so many reasons not to send your children to a Catholic school: The teachers are not always certified in their subject area, the tuition simply isn’t worth it, the kids waste class time going through Catholic rituals like confession…

The only way I can justify sending your children to a Catholic school is if the public schools nearby are even worse. But, in my experience, if you can afford to send your kids to a Catholic school, you’re probably living near some pretty damn good public schools.

St. Edmond Catholic School is a joke. They are sending a message to kids to not question what the Church says — Just smile and nod and never doubt the Church leaders.

Intelligent children know better than that.

Incidentally, another interesting part of this story is that the school knew she wasn’t a Catholic when they hired her:

Nurre said when she was hired at St. Edmonds, she was asked if she was a Catholic. She said she wasn’t. At school, she attended Mass and participated in prayer.

“I was fine with that. I’ve always done that,” she said. “I’m not an atheist. I’m not a Catholic. I’m not a Christian. I’m somewhere in between.”

She said she still wants to be a teacher but that she no longer wants to work in a Catholic school.

I know it’s easy for me to say this when I have a job, but she’s better off not working there.

Abby: I hope you get a job at a real school — One where they allow freedom of thought and where they let your private life remain private.

I wonder: would school officials have fired her so easily if she had instead said Jainism made some sense? Or that Protestant church services were more exciting than Catholic ones?

Brother Richard, who runs Atheist Nexus, adds on to those comments and explains what Atheist Nexus is really all about:

Would the school have fired Nurre if she was a member of a Protestant site, or one geared toward Buddhism? Would the board fire an employee for posting on a private website their use of birth control? Or does the school’s bigotry extend only to those free of supernaturalism?

It is for reasons such as this that Atheist Nexus exists. To give support and encouragement to nontheists and those questioning religious dogma. Only when nonbelievers, like the homosexual community before us, “come out” and demand respect and equality will this change.

Abby’s looking for a new teaching job and I hope she finds one.

One commenter on the Des Moines Register site shared my frustration with this whole story:

Who hasn’t questioned the church or God in their life? I hate the hypocrocy of the church. Question them and [you’re] fired. Molest children and get transferred. Question the church and get denied benefits. Fondle little boys and go meet the Pope!

What percentage of the congregation takes birth control? Has had an abortion? Does not confess? Only shows up on holidays? Fire all of them! Oh, but who is going to put money in the basket? Who is going to donate for the new pulpit? Who is going to support the business model? This is why churches should pay taxes. They are just a business…

… This teacher may someday be the best in her field and you lost out.

"I refuse to engage with her on any other topic except to point out her ..."

San_Ban

An Ohio Church That Had a ..."

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Foxglove

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PrimeNumbers

The Catholic Church should have no place in the education of our children. And to top that, they’re a highly discriminatory organization.
Tori Aletheia

While I agree that she shouldn’t have been fired, she doesn’t seem too bright since she didn’t realize that things she said on the intertubes could come back and bite her on the ass: “I never thought something like that would jeopardize my job,” she said Friday from Phoenix, where she was applying for teaching jobs.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20105290330
littlejohn

I don’t mean to defend the Catholic church, which is, in my opinion, a vast criminal cabal.
But she knew what she was getting into when she agreed to work there. I suspect she was lying when she testified “I am not an atheist.” She was just trying to keep her job.
If this is the worst we can say about an organization that systematically rapes children, we may be over-reacting.
I hope she gets a public school job. And I hope she has learned a lesson about being discreet if she want to work for a religious organization. And, finally, I think we can all learn a lesson about the internet – nothing is really private, and it never goes away.
jemand

This reminds me of a story I heard while at an Adventist university in Michigan– the associated grade school fired a teacher for asking for maternity leave, because she was not married.

I can’t find the record of it, but I believe they settled the resulting lawsuit out of court probably to keep things quiet, but I’m pretty sure she still had to find another job.

Stupid religious schools.
Mark

PrimeNumbers wrote: “The Catholic Church should have no place in the education of our children.”

Your children? How many are you claiming belong to you? It sure sounds like you are trying to impose your atheist views upon others.

I don’t much like the Catholic church either but I’m sure glad we live in a country where religious people have the same rights and freedoms as atheists… at least for now.

If you atheists were really interested in the truth, you would find out that the teacher signed an agreement at the beginning of her job and she violated the terms of that agreement.

Don’t atheists believe its wrong to sign an agreement with no intention of honoring its terms?

Sounds to me like maybe you can’t really “be good without God” after all.
JD

It doesn’t excuse how this school acted, but this is why it’s best to use an alias online. If your internet name is a few letters and numbers, maybe different for each site, then they have no way of knowing who that is.

Facebook is problematic because they constantly change their privacy settings and privacy policies. You can have all settings to “friends only”, but Facebook can and has added settings where the default is much wider than that.

In this case, you also have the question of whether or not one of your co-workers were snitches.
Erp

Actually the really scary bit is they wanted her to be denied unemployment benefits on the grounds she was fired for misconduct.

he school and Iowa Catholic Conference then challenged Nurre’s request for unemployment benefits.

That led to a recent hearing where Tim Hancock, the St. Edmond business manager, testified on behalf of the school. Hancock said that by becoming a member of the Atheist Nexus site, Nurre violated the principles of the Catholic church.

“She should be denied unemployment benefits for being a member of an atheist Web site,” Hancock testified.
JD

Mark, you have a point, but also remember you’re talking about a school that’s part of a larger organization that won’t fire a priest for molesting children (which is my biggest frustration with the RCC), but this school will fire people for not staying in line with the right dogma and saying so in private away from the school, and on private sites and obscure sites.
Revyloution

Mark, your’e making some good points. I can’t figure out why a non-believer of any stripe would want to work at a Catholic school. The money motivator might be the issue, and people of all stripes have lied on job applications. If it’s as innocent as that, then I could under stand, but not condone her actions.

It’s been awhile since I signed up for Atheist Nexus. Wasn’t there a little box that you had to click to confirm you were an atheist? She’s obviously a closeted non-believer, and wanted to keep her job. I wonder where she was lying, to the school board or the Atheist Nexus site?

If I’m wrong about the little check box, let me know. My brain is getting old and addled.
Vinícius O. E.

I’m curious, don’t you guys have laws against this type of prejudice in America?

Here in Brazil one cannot be fired for being gay, a woman, black, atheist or any other minority. Here in Brazil this argument “it’s a religious school and they have every right to fire non-Catholic teachers” would never work. The school would be sued in a heartbeat.

I’m asking this question because from my experience, the laws in America are much better than here and I’m a little shocked to read to story about this teacher.
jemand

In Brazil do religious schools get government money? Because I think that may be the difference– in the US if a parochial school doesn’t take money from the government they aren’t held to anti-discrimination laws.

But if privately funded religious schools in Brazil are also subject to these laws… then awesome wish we had that!
PrimeNumbers

I’m sorry but the RCC has shown time and time again that it’s not suitable to be allowed near children, with their institutional policies of cover-up the abuse and rape. They are no moral role model for children either with their views on homosexuality and contraceptive use. This is not about me imposing my views on others, but stopping the RCC from indoctrinating children with their warped “morals” and dogmas.
flatlander100

Two points:

1. The RC school was a private school run by a religious group. As such, the group running it [RC church] may set whatever standards it pleases [within the law] for those who work for it as teachers. I would not want government at any level having the authority to tell a private religious school that it must hire or retain someone who does not adhere publicly to whatever doctrines it requires its employees to publicly adhere to. We can and should condemn what happened as foolish, unfair, and much besides. But being a private religious school, not accepting public funding, it may apply what standards it pleases to its employees [within the law].

2. Things have changed since I was a Catholic young man at a large public university. Campus priests then [Jesuit order] were telling those of us whose grip on the faith was quite obviously slipping that that was not only a normal occurrence, it was a good thing, that in order to have a strong grip on our faith, we had to go through a crisis of faith, a serious period of doubting and questioning. Some of course would fall away [I did], but many would emerge on the other side of that crisis better Catholics with an adult belief [that’s the term they used], not a child’s unquestioning belief which was suitable for children but not for grown-ups. Things seem to have changed, it seems, so that unquestioning faith is now considered appropriate adult belief.

Sad, really.
Sesoron

I don’t know exactly how the school’s policy was written, but if it’s similar enough to how it was paraphrased above, I’ve got the perfect escape to the situation:

If teachers can only be fired for contradicting the dogmatic *and* moral teachings of the church, then all she had to do was prove that the teachings she contradicted weren’t moral, which would be an easy task.
donniccolo

the entire US educational system is whack – catholic schools are slightly more whack than the rest.

overhaul them all imo.
Stephen P

@Mark:

If you atheists were really interested in the truth, you would find out that the teacher signed an agreement at the beginning of her job and she violated the terms of that agreement.

Would you care to explain how posting a link to an article on prayer research constitutes advocating principles contrary to the teaching of the church?

Would you care to explain how telling some friends something which you have already told your employers constitutes advocating principles contrary to the teaching of the church?

Would you care to explain how either of these is a worse offense than the rape of children, which is apparently not a sackable offence?
Nakor

@Mark: Your point is only half-true. It is true only to the extent that the teacher may have gone against her word or lied. However, by the rest of your logic you would warrant the dogmatic indoctrination of children into young-earth creationism if the parent so desired, despite the fact that we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is a lie. Certainly they have a legal right to that, but I argue that they do not have a moral one.

Personally, I would rather religion not touch children in any way. Ultimately it would be best if they need not hear argument for or against it or anything about it at all until they’re young adults. Obviously, this is impossible without sacrificing freedom of expression, which is clearly unacceptable.

But I don’t think it excuses schools that indoctrinate children into religion and especially into believing known falsehoods, that use practices that are known to cause depression and that train children into not thinking for themselves at all. It’s absolutely unethical, and I fail to see how it is a fault to argue against such schools’ existence.

I will take what PrimeNumbers said two steps further: No church should have any place in the education of any children.
Carol B

Sometimes you work at places that aren’t a good fit because you need a job. I was a travel nurse at a catholic hospital in Arizona for about a year. Every morning and evening a prayer was read over the loudspeaker, praying (preying?) for patients/staff/etc. By the end of my stay there, I found myself muttering aloud each time it was read, almost without knowing it: “This is so stupid. How can they believe this stuff? I’m so sick of hearing this crap.”

I checked out another (California) catholic hospital when I was looking for a permanent job. As part of the application, I had to write a little essay on how I would personally uphold their mission statement to “bring the spirit and message of Jesus Christ to our patients, families, and community.” I considered leaving it blank, then wrote something stupid like “I will be the best nurse I can be.” Needless to say, I’m not working there! But it’s sad: it seems like most hospitals are catholic-run. I’m lucky to now be in one of those rare independent hospitals, where a big cross doesn’t smack you in the face every morning, and non-Christians have to hide in the corners.
Vivian

My neighbor is sending her daughter to Catholic school. She told the school she won’t be at church every week. Their response: “You don’t have to go every week. Just send the money in an envelope every week.”

SO, teachers have to not only be competent in their subject, YET have to adhere to doctrine that the students and parents don’t have to? I know this is a different school, but I’ll bet they don’t dig this deep with their students or parents of students. I’d even turn it on them and put every under a microscope.

@ Mark, sounds like you’re with one of the churches… well, you better be careful they don’t catch you on “Friendly ATHEIST”. I’m certain you don’t get the same “freedom” of going to sites like this.

A school fires a teacher for the things she does on her own time that has no exposure to her students. The school PUBLICLY fires her, demonstrating to students to get rid of people who don’t believe like they do.

And this is good WITH god?
Nakor

Vivian: I believe they view the students as an easy target to continue to indoctrinate into the religion if they are not already (or further if they are, but only somewhat so), and thus the distinction. Which really only makes it worse.
Autumnal Harvest

The only way I can justify sending your children to a Catholic school is if the public schools nearby are even worse. But, in my experience, if you can afford to send your kids to a Catholic school, you’re probably living near some pretty damn good public schools.

Really? Sadly, that’s not my experience at all. The Catholic church has lots of schools in run-down urban areas where public schools are incredibly shitty. In addition, they’re generally more willing to offer need-based scholarships than private schools (for which the tuition is usually already greater). I would hate, hate, hate to send my child to a Catholic school, but I’ve lived in areas where I would hate 100 times more to send my child to th public schools.

Vinicus, we do have laws against religious discrimination in hiring, but organizations are exempt if they have a religious mission, and the position has a religious component. For example, it would obviously be a little odd to say that the RCC couldn’t require that priests and nuns be Catholic. In my (limited) experience, teachers at all levels and all subjects in Catholic schools participate in the RCC’s mission of religious indoctrination, so the schools legal position seems reasonable.

But, as others have pointed out, the fact that the school has a legal right to do something doesn’t mean that their decision to use it doesn’t reflect badly on them.
littlejohn

Mark: Your objection to primenumbers’ use of “our children” is silly. You know perfectly well “our children” is a commonplace idiom, not to be taken literally.
Surely you would not object to an environmentalist saying: “Our children should not be forced to drink water contaminated with arsenic.”
Even if the environmentalist has no children at all, we all understand precisely what he means.
That sort of pedantic nitpicking gets your argument, such as it is, nowhere.
john locke

In defense of sending your children to Catholic Schools, I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The public education system is terrible, but the catholic schools here are very high quality. I went to Catholic School and don’t regret it in the least. I got a good education in the subjects that matter and the schools pretty much ignore the extremist positions like those on contraceptives.
Demonhype

I was sent to the worst Catholic school in Cleveland as a kid because, shitty as it was, the public schools were physically dangerous and lousy with guns and gangs at every level. We couldn’t afford private HS to avoid the even more dangerous public HS, so we had to move in a hurry before I hit ninth grade. (My parents had scrimped and saved for a house in the country all those years, but ended up grabbing whatever they could afford because of that haste.) My parents were also the kind of dopes who simply assume that Catholic school will give their kids some kind of superior moral grounding–and today they admit how wrong they were about that.

I have personally fucked the Catholic church out of several potential students. People have asked me, upon learning of my years in Catholic school, whether I would recommend they send their kids there (some of them were already considering it), and my answer is always a resounding and emphatic “NO”. They are surprised until I tell them why, and then they tend to agree with me. I usually sum it up into two stories that happened there.

First story: I was trying to study math, my worst subject, in sixth grade when this jerk kept smacking my head with his pencil and calling me a “dyke”. I had no idea what that was, but I couldn’t focus on my study, so I got up and told the teacher. She took him out in the hall and I heard something about a “detention if you don’t stop”. They come back in, he sits down and mutters, “bitch”, just a little bit louder than he obviously intended (no one in the room looked more surprised than he did!) He started apologizing right away, as I recall…

He was immediately expelled.

Second story: When my sister was in fifth or sixth, there were these two girls. One was a huge gorilla and a known bully, the other was frail and sickly. The bully brutally beat the frail girl up one day, at one point punching her in the stomach so hard she vomited.

She got a twenty-five minute detention.

The moral of the Catholic church? Mild, even unintentional, insubordination (or even perceived insubordination) is a far more serious crime than physically brutalizing another human being. Kind of explains the whole Inquisition/conquistador attitude a little better, doesn’t it? It’s okay to be a violent sociopath or psychopath even a genocidal maniac, just as long as you are properly subservient to your designated authority figure.

Worse, some of the kids who had been steeped in all that great Catholic morality claimed that it was okay that the gorilla girl did that, because the frail girl “had a big mouth sometimes”, as if that excused it. That is disgusting enough, but I met that girl and, as victimized as I had been, she was even more victimized and timid than I was. They gave her abuse that they’d never dare to give me (I used to get in fist-fights in kindergarten, so they knew where my “too far, now you die” line was set. This girl didn’t seem to have one. The way things worked at that school, if you have been selected as the victim of your class, any attempt you make to defend yourself from classmate torment, verbally or otherwise, was seen as “asking for it”. Similar to the treatment of atheists by society–they villify and demonize us constantly, but any attempt by atheists to counteract this abuse is used as a retroactive justification for the abuse.

I realize kids are cruel in every school, but I’ve been to both kinds of school and so I say from experience that Catholic school was much worse and far more damaging, and as long as you were properly subordinate the teachers had an even greater tendency to look the other way when abuse was happening, justify abuse, and to encourage the students in that kind of mindset.

BTW, Mark? Atheists and believers do not have the exact same rights in this country. Believers, especially Christian believers, are over-privileged, often at the expense of atheists and/or non-Christians. Every time an atheist wants to have the same basic rights as a believer, it often ends up as a court case with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the believing side at the idea that their privilege shouldn’t transcend the basic rights of non-believers.

Well, they used to get that more often in the past, because they made sure that any visible atheist suffered greatly. The resulting invisibility of atheists allowed them to spin shameless lies about us, which resulted in public support of the persecution. It was a vicious cycle and they loved it. Now that atheists are becoming not only visible but increasingly visible, they are losing that privileged status and they don’t like it.

Reminds me of Bad Religion’s “Live Again”
“Desperate, tenacious, clinging like a grain of sand
Watching its foundation wash away
Drunk with the assertions they know they can’t defend
Confident that they might live again”

Seriously, I fucked the church out of students even before all this child-rape shit really started hitting the fan–my whole basis then was simply the warped sense of “morality” peddled by these fucktards. Thinking back, I’m proud that my advice may have saved some kids from being hurt. By fucking the church, I helped kids not get fucked! That is a great feeling!
Demonhype

On the other hand, your kid will come home with lots of lovely crayon drawings about how only filthy whores get abortions because they love to kill poor innocent unborn babies. I grew up, learned the facts, and became pro-choice, but a few months ago my mom found this picture from Catholic school. They fed us a lot of lies and propaganda, then had us take out the crayons and each of us draw a poster depicting how evil abortion is. My picture depicted a nine-months-pregnant woman up at a counter getting a bottle of pills from an off-camera person who assured her in a word-balloon that if she took one every day, that the nuisance would be gone. Or something to that effect.

The sheer ignorance of abortion practices and laws astounded me in that picture, and all the bullshit poured back to me. I don’t think I ever realized exactly how much ignorant, hate-filled propaganda I was being exposed to under the pretense of “education” and “morality” until I saw that innocently crayoned tribute to misogyny. In fact, Catholic school was the first time I heard someone respond to the concern about backalley abortions with “It’s no more than the filthy whores deserve, to bleed to death in a pile of garbage. Good for them!” I usually ended up tucking the abject ugliness and insanity away, partially because it was so common and partially because of the high cost of disapproval. It was easier to just go blank in that situation and ignore the hideousness.

Another teacher told the girls that it was a mortal sin to divorce no matter what, even if your husband is beating you senseless every day and your life is in jeapordy. “You made a promise to GOD, and that is more important than your personal safety,” she told us.

Sure, fire a teacher who simply expresses in her private life what you already knew about her when you hired her, even though she doesnt’ bring it into the classroom. But make sure there are lots of teachers who will teach all the girls and boys that women should have no autonomy in their lives, and that men should control their choices even when the man in question is physically violent.

Oh, wait, the latter would be “propigating the superior values of the Catholic church” so that would be okay, right?

Funny end to the divorce story–if you want to call it that. My sister had that teacher two years later. In that time, her daughter got a divorce. Why? Because her husband kept “kissing his sweetie with his fist”, as the Family Guy song goes. And so she actually changed her story to “well, divorce is evil, except in cases of physical abuse.” Good for you, lady! Too bad you couldn’t have hypothetically considered the idea of your daughter in that position before you told untold classes of girls that they would burn in hell for eternity for leaving an abusive husband, and that a promise to God is more important than any amount of human decency or necessity.

God damn, I hate the Catholic Church. It’s a festering pustule of smugly pious hypocrisy on the rectum of humanity.
Dan W

I’m from Iowa, and when I read about this in the newspaper I was thinking along the same lines as you, Hemant. Why is it that the possibility of her being an atheist is more important to the school than her ability to teach math? That Catholic school’s actions were completely illogical. Then again, the Catholic church isn’t known for being logical.
Pierce Presley

Someone mentioned Baton Rouge, and I have to include New Orleans in the mix of places where the public schools really are shitty enough to make Catholic (and other private) schools a better alternative. Of course, this is accomplished by using things like excessive homestead exemptions to reduce property taxes and starve the public schools. Guess where vouchers have always been very, very popular. And don’t discount racism, though it might go the other way: my wife’s crappy private school gave a scholarship to one black kid while she was there to bolster their basketball team (and admitted it). Problem was, he couldn’t play worth a damn. (To the school’s credit, it did honor his scholarship.)

This isn’t to say that no one in New Orleans area public schools got an education or made anything of themselves, just that if they did it was without the money and support the private schools enjoyed.
Rosanna

It’s what I dislike about the Catholic Church, ie the “do not think” mantra.
I for example am a believer but I question everything I am told – to the point that I got in trouble with different priests in different parishes.
Years ago, I enrolled in Freemasonry, and am PROUD of it. The Church condemns ALL Freemasons, NO distinction included, NO questions asked. In other words, a Freemason who reads the gospel everyday is regarded as being “as bad as” a Freemason who is an atheist or any other person who is evil. We are denied sacraments “just because”, on the ground of a mere enrollment.
More than something having to actually do something with a person’s faith it sounds to me more like a punishment for having dare to think out of the box. 🙁
Daniel

Friendly Atheist? Hardly. Sounds more like a highly biased individual preaching (pun intended) to a downward spiral of like-minded individuals. Religion itself is not detrimental anymore than a gun kills innocent people by itself; take anything in this world and it can be corrupted, simply find the right people to corrupt it. It’s the human factor that drags so many things down to the point where you feel justified with these views.
But yes, this is a pretty bad showing for the school faculty. Then again, it’s specifically this school, not the whole faith. I wouldn’t blame Smith and Wesson if one of their guns was used in a lethal robbery. I don’t see the point in blaming an entire religion for the poor judgment of about ten people.
Ok, I’m done. Turn that angry grimace into hateful words directed at me and everything I apparently represent. Ya know you want to. 😉
Oh! Don’t forget to mention that I continue whatever trend you’ve convinced yourself non-atheists follow. Remember, you’re smarter than me, and therefore must be forever right and justified in all your actions. (It’s true! Really!)

Edit: Comment moderation? Ah well…at least I gave you, the moderator, something to smile smugly at. (Because I’m stupid and can’t think for myself, remember? It’s a miracle (lol puns!) I could even figure out how to use the computer without divine inspiration)
Waltz707

it seems you have met a lot of atheists who only want to sound right and be better than you. I really hope you will not do what you say we do and paint us all with one brush. While I don’t agree with some things on this site, I read multiple sources. I don’t feel that religious people are stupid, or need help from a divine being to do things, I wish that they would realize that because they don’t need to pray to pour coffee, that maybe a god is not necessary.

But thats just me 🙂