What turned you into an atheist?
A trusted friend who steered you in the right direction?
Actually reading the Bible for once?
Or was it the fact that you just got turned off by the “extremists” in your faith? Not necessarily the murderers or the suicide bombers, but the people who just give the faith a bad name? People like Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson, Bill Donahue, and the crazy guy preaching on your campus?
David Byars doesn’t think we give that last group enough credit and he wants to thank them:
How many of us were given pause after someone said that God’s plan is for women to be subordinate to men?
Or when someone objected to someone else’s sex life because we were made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?
And how much better off are we without god-belief? We should be thanking those nutty evangelistic crackpots! They are performing a public service, even if it isn’t the one they believe they are.
Makes sense. Those religious nuts do our work for us. They make it a *lot* easier for people to distance themselves from their religions. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of them.
God bless ’em.
David wants to go one step further:
So this is what I propose:
November 14th should be “Thank an Extremist Day”If you were startled out of complacency because of something stupid or infuriating that a religious celebrity said, send them a letter, an email, a tweet or comment on their blog thanking them for getting your feet off the road to religion and starting you running the other way.
I’m sure Ray Comfort will appreciate all the attention 🙂