e-atheist??

Alright, get all your laughing out before I tell you this whole story, but I was

debating on the internet.

I like to debate about atheism/religion/theology/what have you. I was viewing this article and then brought it up with my friend (who's Catholic). I wasn't out for a fight, I wanted to know if the author of the article was a prominent figure in the religious community, but things went south real quick when I said something along the lines of, "This guy is desperately misinformed." All he does is insult atheists, calling them "a scrappy, disputatious bunch," while trying to boast his fail!science practices with history lessons... an argument really not related to this post mmk.

My friend found this as a personal attack and started bombing about how I was such an "e-atheist" and how these "e-atheists" were a smudge in American society.

Not knowing what an e-atheist was, I wiki'd it; obviously it's not such a popular term (as he said it was) since it doesn't have a wiki article. I made this statement as a joke, to lighten the mood y'know? But oh no, this guy wouldn't have it. He refused to actually define this term because I was "so clearly one of them." I google'd it next, only to find an actual site called eatheist.com, which had nothing bad to say about atheists. It was merely a news type site that had links (all of which were broken) to atheism in the news.

Given his context, I narrowed it down to three things (gogo reading comprehension classes!): an e-atheist is either a person who ONLY flaunts their atheism online, a person whose atheism is only derived from the will to spite God/their parents, or perhaps something of both.

It's true I only talk about atheism on the internet, but it's my personal experience NOT to bring this up irl or expect riots to ensue.

So, I guess the short version is:
What's an e-atheist/should I be insulted?

Never be insulted by a person who doesn't believe the same thing you do... Because no matter how you explain it, they'll never understand. Trust me.

In my opinion your friend means that you became an atheist by gathering information about religions online, instead of talking a real well-informed person about religions...

Also, your friend probably heard the word e-atheist in one of his religious groups and decided to call you that. So the reason he didn't want to explain it, is because he didn't know the explanation himself. I'm actually pretty certain about that...

i wrote a fairly long respone and when i posted it i got some sort of maintenance forum message and it was lost. sigh. im short on time, maybe next time haha

Saint wrote:

Never be insulted by a person who doesn't believe the same thing you do... Because no matter how you explain it, they'll never understand. Trust me.

I guess you're right... sticks and stones may break your bones but pixels can never hurt you.

It just took me by surprise how easily offended he was (I've known him for years) and how quick he was to insult ME instead of saying something like "I found that offensive and you hurt my feelbads, wah." (Which I'm mocking right now, but I still would have backed off.)

as an e-atheist I am offended, but I don't know why. I'll get back to you after I google the matter...

wah wah :-)

Just shut him up, Meg. Come on... Religious people are easy targets. I once worked with a guy who denied the existance of dinosaurs. Man, I had fun with him. He also told me that his preacher knew for a fact that Charles Darwin himself read the bible on his deathbed and said that he was wrong and the bible was right. Religious people will pull anything out of their asses to twist the facts and make it seem like they're right.

My response to all those people is: "I believe in what I see. Show me God, Allah, Boeddha, Yawhe, or some divine guy or girl I've never heard of and I will dedicate my life believing in him or her. No problem for me. But as long as I have no visual proof, man and earth can be created by meteordust for all I care."