Verified answer

In my own case, I think that it is a combination of factors that allows me to discuss things in a civil and polite manner;

First: Courtesy costs me nothing, nor in my experience is respect a painful or difficult thing to have for my fellow human beings.

Second: I do not insult -anyone's- beliefs, because most of my friends and family are believers of the various faiths representing most of the world's major religious affiliations and I genuinely care about them. I figure that if a belief in a God gives them a handle on the meaning of life, or helps them to find fulfillment or joy or contentment or peace, then I am genuinely happy for them. I don't have to have believe the same thing in order to love the people who are in my family or to care about the ones who have been my friends half of my life.

Third: I am not anonymous, this is really my name. Consequently all those people I just mentioned are able to read what I write on the Internet and would call me on it if I was not being 100% honest. I think a lot of the people who spew vitriol or who call others names only do so because their normal behavioral inhibitions are removed when they appear to have anonymity on the Internet.

My own self respect prevents me from acting in a manner I would find repugnant. I think that it is really just a simple matter of making the effort to -be- the kind of person with whom I would enjoy a conversation.

It's very hard to answer general questions like this, because I don't know what you consider to be "crossing the line".

For instance, you just called a group of people bottom-feeders. Some would consider that crossing the line. Others would consider it simply unwise. Me, I see it as defending yourself.

Plenty of Christians have asked questions like this, but the situations they are talking about are just like your use of name-calling here. Some Christian insults atheists, atheists defend themselves, then some Christian gets butt-hurt about it and cries about mean atheists.

I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but without a specific example of what you mean, I can't really give my own opinion.

Some of the questions asked here come with insults, slurs and are condescending. It can get frustrating and sometimes the sarcasm comes out. If someone calls atheists immoral or an idiot I'd say a similar response should be expected. But a lot of the time the sarcasm or disagreement in the beliefs is interpreted as mean when it is not. That's the way I see it anyway.

Well, it goes both ways, of course. Many Christians are anything but Christ-like when addressing, or talking about, non-Christians, particularly atheists. Yes, some atheists do "cross the line", as do some Christians. One wonders why you only think it odd that atheists cross that line when Christians who have, they say, been called to be Christlike, cross that same line with impunity.

As for the insulting atheists, many are simply fed up with the arrogance and bigotry displayed by a certain ilk of Christian and are sick of having Christians proselytize them and are downright angry about having Christianity mingled with a government that should be secular and neutral in matters of religion.

My question is: why do Christians get so angry just because atheists don't believe in their god when the majority of the human population also don't believe in their god but that doesn't bug them nearly as much, if at all, as long as they believe in some "false" god such as Allah, Krishna, Vishnu, etc.?

~Ex-Christian. Atheist.

Because they speak approximately their "proper(god given ofcourse..LOL) to transform" in areas like India, Phillipines, Korea and close to all over the place, adding culturally touchy/backward tribal belts within the North east(of ROI), amazon and even papua new guinea...there may be slightly a location on the planet and not using a missionary camp. Multitudes of cultures were misplaced and nonetheless are being destroyed because of christinaity.Yet whilst an atheist wishes this equal proper to evangelise and be vocal in his notion of not anything, they're denied the proper to take action.You see the hypocracy now? Its the equal with islam in which they have got each proper to instruction their tradition in overseas lands they to migrate to however others should not have the proper to instruction their religion in islamic lands. OTOH asthiks(sanskrit for atheist) are men and women who're born into hindu(vedic/non-vedic) families and end up atheists however are nonetheless accredited by means of mainstream Hindus.Google asthik and you'll see India vedic civilisation has accredited such deviants considering that time immemorial.Tribals/much less sophesticated cultures could also be much less accepting of atheists. Point is many ancient global incredibly developed/sophesticated prime-tradition religions accredited atheists or atleast their proper to reside.OTOH what did your lot do to galileo(who was once nonetheless a believer) whilst he stated the earth is flat?What did your church do to that different believer Giordano bruno(copernicanism)?Think.

I couldn't possibly hate christians. There are way too many in my family with I love dearly. Whenever I get insults from christians, it makes me feel my honest answer's are striking home. My answer''s go along the line of something like this. If god was an all seeing and all knowing god like it is said it is, why didn't it know the human was going to turn out the same if it had a flood or didn't. God never told Noah it was sorry for the flood, god just said to Noah it was taking off for the high country. Or, why did god give it's sons human male reproductive organs and no females in their heaven. The bible writers really make god out to be a complete idiot. This is the same god they write about that created all the players and then choose which sides they would be on and has a war, in heaven of all places. You must give me a lot of latitude to understand the genius of that crazy act.When god created non-human sons and gave them human male reproductive organs and the sons come to earth and rape many human females it had to have been done under gods orders, if god knows everything, would god still have given them the organs. One must keep in mind all times that god creates everything for the purpose they are created.

I don't have any insight into what goes through their mind than anyone else does. Some possible reasons, I'd imagine, are:

1) The anonymity offered by the internet

2) Religion is a touchy subject, thus this is a good place for trolls to come to to provoke responses

3) Overly zealous; you'll always have the radical people around

4) Misinterpretation - often people overreact here I've found. I've had people become offended by many of my answers, which I intended to have a neutral (or even friendly/joking) tone.

Sure. It doesn't accomplish anything to insult anyone or call them names except make people defensive.

But some people take things like 'there is no evidence' and 'you're living a dream' as an insult.

Some people only want others to agree with them.

By the way, i've received letters from Christians who were pretty insulting, calling me an idiot etc..

Actually I would think that most atheists would love to have an in depth and intellectual conversation with some christians. The problem is Y!A is full of idiots, trolls and fundies as well as people who ask the same questions every hour (eg Pascals Wager). It gets tiresome.

Also for me the worst thing is how illogical some people can be and their disregard for evidence or any sort of education. I would think you would be suprised to know how much a lot of atheists know about christanity compared to a lot of christians.

People "cross the line" all the time, its not just limited to atheists, and certainly not to Yahoo Answers. Lines are crossed when people resort to offensive personal insults, but I don't see anything wrong with stating your views and pointing out the flaws in someone elses'.