I moved away to the Ex Christian website a couple of months back as there wasn't much going on there and got daily digests by e-mail.  Everything was going OK but it being an ex christian rather than ex fundy website there was much more demanded of members.  There were trolls however.

However in the past few days somebody posted a very nasty and sarcastic piece on becoming a christian and making sweeping generalisations about christians not thinking, using capital letters when posting on-line, witnessing in gay bars, purchasing fire arms and owning Smart cars so they're not tempted to have sex in the back seat.  I pointed out that the rant was a sweeping generalisation and not all christians were like that and in fact some of the attributes were just as likely to apply to non christians.  I found it particularly offensive as my in-laws, who are Presbyterians, are over here staying in a hotel and they are among the sweetest people I know; welcoming me into their family when my brother has taken this lackadaisacal attitude towards me. For this I got attacked and called names and even accused of being a troll.  I answered back and found a gang of four or five of them were ganging up on me.  I did fight back as hard as they fought me. 

BTW my brother's attitude towards me is appalling.  I got wind of his wedding through my parents and he didn't even formally invite me.  When I phoned him asking if I could come he replied nonchalantly that I could if I wanted to.  Not even a 'yes, do come, I'd love to see you there'.  Whereas my sister in law keeps nagging me to come and visit I have never done using a fear of flying as an excuse.  I know I won't be welcome by my brother is he takes that attitude but my sister in law assures me that he doesn't know how to express his feelings.  When it comes to my birthday and Christmas my sister in law is the one who sends the cards.  She trusted my brother to send the presents but I ended up getting the Christmas presents later and later in the following year so in the end I stopped sending them. He does very little without being prompted by my sister in law.  She says he's a good father but that is because he does exactly when he's told when it comes to the children.  I'm beginning to wonder if my brother has Asperger's syndrome or genuinely hates me because of a fight we had in our teens and that our parents like to keep reminding us about so I don't forget it.  But that's another story.

I mentioned that I was not an atheist.  One even suggested I was a christian still.  I replied that you didn't have to be an atheist to be an ex christian.  Then I got attacked for suggesting the site was for atheists only.  I let them know I was an agnostic and then one of them told me that agnostics were believers.  I disagreed about that and even gave them the Collins dictionary definition of an agnostic.  There was a lot of splitting hairs and circular logic; exactly what you expect from the worst of evangelical and fundamentalist christians and I let them know that.  In fact somebody else agreed with me.  Now I'm banned from the site for sticking up for myself.  I found it sucked anyway as everybody is expected to offer platitudes to the person who posts a testimony or rant and parrot the comment above.  It seems that there is a set way of thinking to these people just as there is for fundies.

The fundies make sweeping generalisations about secular people and fundamentalist atheists make sweeping generalisations about christians forgetting that there are liberal christians and that christians vary from denomination to denomination and from country to country.

The funny thing is that this morning on a BBC discussion programme one of the topics was about atheists being intolerant.  One christian girl was constantly being labelled as soft minded and sneered at with contempt by atheists.  Others on the programme were told by fundies they were going to hell.  Which is worse?

Ex fundies must not fall into the same trap that fundies fall into no matter what are present beliefs are.  Fundamentalist atheism makes me sick just as much as fundamentalist christianity and Islam.