Reply To: Reeling from Christian friend's bigotry
Hullo @MrTag,
Full disclosure. I am/was an occasional visiting theist to the old ThinkAtheist site, and maybe here. I’m a Christian and a Catholic (not a fundamentalist), and a faculty member in the sciences at an R1 university in the U.S.
I know it’s important to be able to vent to friends about how inane other folks can be, and I don’t want to trespass if that’s your intent. Vent away, I won’t be offended.
If perchance you’re really looking for feedback, I’d gently suggest that friends are friends. You like this fellow, you have a lot in common. I think friends can have differences of opinions on ideas, and even rousing arguments while remaining friends. It’s a choice to hold our personal ideas so close that we feel personally offended or attacked when others disagree, and that choice is usually a poor one that leads to all sorts of bad things in the world. It’s, dare I say, “dogmatic” in the bad sense.
My question to you would be, has the fellow ever treated you badly? Ever treated your son(s) badly in person? In other words, have his actions and behaviors toward real, live people been offensive? Particularly out of choice, rather than just unthinking ignorance? In that case, perhaps it’s time to end the friendship. If, on the other hand, the dust-up is just over online postings, go have a beer with the fellow. Online conversations lack verbal and nonverbal cues and often generate more heat than light as a result.
Personally, I think it’s a good thing to have friends who think differently than you do. Surrounding ourselves with like-minded “yes men” is often a choice of ego and ignorance. Spending time with different people allows us to learn from them, and affords opportunities to change or moderate their ideas.
