A request for a response from r/atheism on this issue. Please be respectful and thoughtful in your writing.

Someone recently said they were 'disgusted' by hate towards r/atheism. For myself, personally, I feel greatly annoyed by r/atheism for what I see as disrespect of people of faith, and also either being elitist and suggesting everyone else in the world is a dimwit, or claiming to be the most horrifically oppressed minority group in the United States. For the most part, rarely any humorous value and seems to be unfortunately mean-spirited and lacking taste or good-fun, things we would hope to find on reddit. See: here and here and here here annd here [and here] (http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/mwhpu/one_of_the_most_severe_cases_of_stockholm/) and here and here and here and here and my personal favorite about Buddhism's peaceful values being good and reincarnation being reasonable while the peaceful principles of other religions surely aren't by the same standards

HERE is an example of what I think is a very reasonable respectful and insightful post of comparison between religion and atheism also, a one in a million post i found where someone tries to find positives about religion

and i will edit this as many times as i need to as i find new ones.

Also suggested by same person who was disgusted by a backlash against r/atheism:

it's a subreddit called r/atheism, which is for atheism

From what I observe, this subreddit simply does not live up to its name. When quite often the entire page of r/atheism is filled with titles only containing '____(insert negative adjective) ____ (insert religion)', it simply is not following the subreddit title. Is it fair for someone to kindly ask that r/atheism try to post a little more in the positive department about atheism and a little less in the negative department about religion? It's like r/ihateyouallwhodon'tsharemynonbelief. I understand that there certainly are many posts about the experiences, hardships, good feelings, and love of being atheist. Those are good for this subreddit. But they are so often drowned out by the negative side of r/atheism.

r/atheism has a high tendency to show intolerance towards religion. It shows hypocrisy in ignorance towards believers of all faiths. Contrary to the apparently popular belief, most religious people do not assume you are going to burn in hell. They don't all think evolution is some pipe-dream. They don't all think homosexuality is anything different from the color of someone's hair. They don't all give anything of a crap about what others believe, as long as they aren't dicks about it. Yes, there are extreme, irrational morons who say dumb things, harass atheists, and claim that their religion justifies it when it does not. But r/atheism shows an equal, if not greater, amount of that idiocy here on reddit than anyone of faith when it posts things like what I showed above and condones it, if not upvoting it to 1000+ onto the frontpage. I cannot understand why you do not think the 'circlejerk' term is deserved, from that specific viewpoint, because the general redditor's perception of r/atheism are the intolerant posts which are upvoted to the 1,000 and no one could understand how it were possible without the explanation of 'circlejerk'. Just do not stoop to that level. It makes you look bad.

I am a person with my own faith but I do not associate with any religions. I was raised Catholic, but I found some problems with the organization. I found my own individual path, and my parents were supportive of me. I still have problems with the organization of the Catholic Church, but I don't care to sit around making mean comments about it instead of formulating a respectful list of criticism. I rarely share my specific beliefs, but I don't hide them if anyone wants to have an open-minded discussion about them. My life is heavily involved in science and logic. For those of you who can't understand how those two things possibly go together, feel free to talk to me about it before you 'rip me apart' and claim victory without even having a conversation first, because I enjoy sharing what I feel to be the common ground.

It is my guess that many will downvote this before they even reach the end of the post, just because they sense a vibe of disagreement with the general assembly of r/atheism. And 'god forbid' that happen, as I'm sure you'd love me to say ;)

My point in the end: I see your beliefs/non-beliefs absolutely no differently from any other values or trait or characteristic of any person, and I'm on your side when it comes to the overzealous and ignorant extremes of the religious population who do harass atheists. But don't play a 'victim' card if you are then going to proceed to be a jerk to every single religion. It's straight hypocrisy, which I see is commonly criticized here when others do it.

Of course, open for discussion here. Have at it. AMA too, if that one part I wrote about my faith and loving science, math and logic confuses you.

EDIT: OH look, a downvote before anyone even gives a reply. Huge surprise.