I finally heard back from our friend who wrote to me about how I’m an atheist and how atheists are stupid and how they hope I burn in hell or something. Read the original note and my reply here. I’m actually surprised they left a real email address, because usually when people tell me off incoherently, they get so excited they spell their email address wrong, or they don’t want to receive any kind of backlash. But this person did, for whatever reason. My reply to them was rather sarcastic and said that I thought if we each took a few minutes out of our day to be mean to each other, the world would be a better place. They wrote back:

Well thank you for writing back to me it means a whole lot. By the way your website is mocking christianity which can anger some people but what do I know I’m just a serf in this world. When you mock something such as a religion, people don’t usually dont react too nice especially people who follow it faithfully, that hurts just a little bit. So do your part and not write such hasty remarks, because they do
find that kind of writing offensive. So thank you in your part in keeping us “on our toes”!

I’m kind of confused by the overall tone of this. Also, is the author saying they themselves are offended, or that fictional Christians are? Overall, I’m not sure what’s serious and what’s heartfelt. Although if they had just written this letter to me originally (or at least the second half), then I would have responded much more favorably.

That said, it’s not my responsibility to make sure that nobody’s feelings are hurt or their faith questioned. Faith, or your relationship with the divine, or whatever you want to call it is YOUR own personal struggle, for which you alone are responsible. It’s not supposed to be easy or simple. You can and should question not only stuff that I say, but that anybody says. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say them, just to spare your feelings. Shit, I’m just trying to make my own way like everybody else. Except I’m doing it a little bit more publicly.

UPDATE!

Turns out that when I pursued this guy on the subject, he admitted that he was originally just trying to get a rise out of me. God only knows for what reason. The thing people need to remember, I think is that pretending to be an asshole and actually being an asshole usually come off as pretty much the same thing.