Clairfying the Question

Kim,

Thanks for taking the time to lay out your thoughts. Here's a brief post where I hope we can clarify the question. Put simply, the question(s) I'm addressing is/are:

What do Atheists ask from people, and is what they ask for OK?

While addressing that question, I also tend to address:

• Do Atheists KNOW that what they're asking from people
• What are people like?
• What are the consequences of things that are being asked for?

Things I generally don't address are:

• What is the state of the world now?
• What do religions ask of people?

I don't find those questions to be relevant. I am talking about Atheism, as expressed, and not in comparison to anything else. Just as it is useful to examine ourselves without comparison to others, in order to have a chance to see ourselves as-is and to establish what we really want from ourselves, it is useful to do the same with Atheism. And I find that step, as it is usually sorely lacking in people, is sorely lacking in Atheism. And it shouldn't be--Atheists are supposed to be thinkers.

In fact, that's the whole point of this argument. Atheists are supposed to be thinkers. But (a) most people aren't thinkers, so most people can't be Athiests (or at least, not according to what Atheists generally think an Atheist should be) and (b) many Atheists aren't good thinkers at all. Almost everything I talk about comes directly from this point, especially the (a) part.

OK, I guess I leaked back into trying to push my viewpoint... but hopefully I made it clear what I'm trying to address and why. Rather than posting another post about it, let's use comments if things aren't clear or if something should be changed.