I just want to apologize for being rude.  It was a mistake to come here.  I am sorry if I insulted anyone; I was trying to be provocative, but I really don't like anything about the way this has gone.  (And I'm not trying to come back or anything, so please leave your flamethrower in its holster; I'm a human being.)

We are human too dude. Remember that the next time you do something like this.

I am still feeling badly about coming here. I am sorry. Please just nuke the thread, I don't want my name on it.

Or how about now that you have been humbled, you try discussing stuff in a more regular manner?

The fact is that you do not get to dictate how stuff will happen on the internet. So roll with what happens and learn from it. We all have done exactly that. It is not that big of a deal.

Brian, 

Do you actually ban accounts?

I am asking because I "believed" that, unlike theists' forums, atheists' forums do not ban users (unless they go wild about race, sex, etc.).

100%

Please put yourself in my position; I said some things that I regret, and I've apologized. It's not a business thing; I am employed. I am just embarrassed by my conduct. Treat me the way you'd want to be treated, ya know?

If you knew how I wanted to be treated and you expected the same treatment, you would've never asked.  I wouldn't ask for it to be deleted, but then again I wouldn't have been in your shoes either.  I make it a point not to be a dick about something there is a chance I'm wrong about.  

Trust me you don't want me to treat you the way I want to be treated. 

Yeah you should leave it up as punishment.

I should mention that I'm not a habitual drinker.

Instead of hoping for a clean slate. Why don't you accept the fact that you made the comments, and move forward.  Show people how different you can be.  Show them that you can learn to approach things differently.  That way in the future you can look back and point to how you were and how you are now.

Sapient has stated that he unbanned your account. You can post as froodley now.

I know that.  I'm choosing not to because I don't feel like I'm being treated very considerately.  I made acted unkindly in a moment of bad judgement, realized my mistake and apologized.  You are acting unkindly on an ongoing basis.  Maybe the immaturity is not as one-sided as you think.  Maybe it's not even so much on my side.

Yes, that's correct. 

Who says I'm uneducated?  I have a college degree in philosophy.  I've had thousands and thousands of conversations and arguments about these issues.  I've read many of the books you are likely to name.  I've spent most of my life thinking about religion.  I took a particular tactic in posting here, which I regret, but maybe to me the situation seems reversed.  Maybe to me you seem new and left-brained and stubborn.

I don't really want to waste my time, so unless you can do what I already have done, back down from your original stance and realize you're being abusive, then I will have to endure the black mark.  On the other hand, I think a lot of people reading this thread would see a very different conversation than the one you all see.  They would see a guy calling me an idiot and trying to publicly humiliate me for disagreeing with him.

You decide whether you may have a share in this.  I don't really think I come out looking that bad, apart from being kind of a jerk to a room full of people who routinely do the exact same thing to theists.

No we didn't dumbass, you posted it as anonymous again so it is still waiting for me to approve it as I was at work.  I will approve it in a minute.  I told you I unbanned your account so you can post as froodley so you didn't have to wait.  Are you drunk again?   
 

 We have been as considerate as possible in an effort to make you understand that you don't have to run away like a scolded dog with your tail tucked between your legs. You do understand you aren't in any position here to give anyone or terms conditions as to whether you return to this forum or not. The choice is yours on whether to stay or go. Once again you are making an ass of yourself by telling us we are the immature ones. Refer to my previous post if you like then tell me if you actually think it's immature.

I don't remember my exact wording but my point was to get you to understand that if you come here trying to blast people you will definitely get it right back to you. I highly doubt you have gotten very far in thousands of debates and arguments if you handled them the way you did on here. You have used alcohol as an excuse and all I can say to that is that maybe you shouldn't log on when under the influence? In case you don't realize this isn't a see who can cut each other down thing. Time to time you will see that but for the most part it's usually educated debate.

There's really not that many posts on this thread and the majority of them are from the same people. I willing to bet that if most everyone on here with the exception of the actual Christians ( if there are any ) had seen this you'd probably be drinking a case right now crying. Maybe you should take more time to think about what you said and understand how offensive you were.Then come back with a different attitude cuz I can tell you people aren't going to be nice about that kind of attitude you portrayed so far. If you're looking for pity you're in the wrong place.

We heard the sorrys but I'm pretty sure there isn't room for too many more and we are not going to coddle you like a baby. You are a grown man I assume and you are entitled to your opinion but sometimes things are better left unsaid. There's also a much mature way of disagreement with people that don't have the same belief as you.So we're not going to beg you to stay. The choice is yours. All we're saying is come here on a mature level. Check other threads that are put here with intent to piss people off. They get it way worse than you did.You can rant all you want to here but you should know what is to come of that when your intent is to piss people off.

That being said, stay or go we really don't care. Like I said in my previous post there is obviously a reason you created an account on here. But if it is to come in here and tell everyone they are stupid and uneducated mofos then maybe you shouldn't come back cuz you're just going to keep getting the same stuff that is making you so unhappy right now.

You seem to misunderstand your main flaw.  When you use a line like "intellectually lazy mofos" you should hope you are not being one yourself.  While many people don't advocate being a dick, I don't see as much of a problem with it if you have the stuff to back it.  Still to this point you haven't seemed to learn that atheist and agnostic are not mutually exclusive.  All agnostics are either theist or atheist.  That is the crux of this thread because YOU made it the crux of the thread.  Since a few posts in, once you learned what our arguments were this thread turned into an argument about personality, while it should have been about comprehension.  Your major flaw is not personality, it's comprehension.  

You may think that an outsider would view us as rude, we may think the other.  Who cares about that?  An intelligent outsider will be looking to see where you admit that your first post was wrong not because of how you presented your argument but because of the context of your argument.  You are wrong about your position, the fact that you were a jerk about it is secondary.  That you didn't get this earlier, before I needed to outline it for you is beyond me.  

Well I can see where you would want them to delete it but chances are they're not going to. All I'm saying is that if you want to live it down just take it as a learning experience and move on. Nobody takes remarks like those with a grain of salt. I'm sure that if a homeless person walked up to you and asked for money and you screamed at them get a job you lazy piece of shit they would probably have some pretty bitter words in return.

Some of us have had our asses handed to us here and some of us lash back out in return. But the thing about it is you say what you say and move on. It doesn't mean you have to even talk to that person if you don't want to. You'll get disagreement here and a good bit of crap that'll piss you off. I'm not looking for friends on here, I have plenty. I just made the profile to see what was up on here, liked it and decided to stay. Anyway, if you decide to stay I hope you enjoy it.

Me too.

Actually, I will reply to part of butterbattle's because he made some points I need to address...

My general reply to your response:  I am mostly replying from a cell phone, with very limited time, and I don't have the wherewithal to completely individualize every reply.  My replies are usually general replies to everything that's been said since the last time I posted.  I wish I could do a better, more fair job than that, and I don't think all atheists are anything.  That said, it's much less time-consuming to paint with too broad a brush and apologize for the ones it misses than it is to do an in-depth psychological profile and life history of every individual you meet and cater your statements to that person's specific attitudes and proclivities.  "So sue me."

Is it?  I could write some stiff, mealy-mouthed academic stuff, but I've learned that there are other, more effective, and ultimately more meaningful ways to express myself.  I graduated with top honors from a good school.  I just don't think of academic writing as having any vitality or historical importance at this stage, and I don't bother myself with it.

I thought about it more and decided it wasn't really that it looked _SO_ bad... it was the mixture of things... endorsing and acknowledging psychedelic use, being rude... it's not that I look like a good guy.  I probably look like a jerk.  It's that most of you do, too.  And more to the point, it's that YOU'RE actually still BEING jerks.

You're making an unjustified, sweeping assumption about me right there.  I just said, twice, that I'm not a habitual drinker.  And yeah, you know what?  You can say all you want that every atheist should be treated as an individual.  And in some fantasy land, that's true.  But it's just like any other group in the world; it has a reputation, and that reputation is partially deserved.  I face discrimination because of my longish hair.  It's not fair, but I don't bitch and moan and complain about it.  If you want to stand out as different from the average atheist, as some of you do, then do so, but if the shoe fits you're gonna wind up wearing it.

Would it surprise you to learn that to another type of person, what you just said seems merely arrogant and amusing?

Just a little suggestion.  The library has workstations you can use with real keyboards and free internet access.  Your tax dollars at work -----

Nice to meet you.  Even if it is saying hello to say goodbye.

PS: my degree is Systems Engineering and I really am an old lady - my grandson turns 15 shortly.

Okay, I'll buy that. I wish you wouldn't quote me then, because I assume that you're responding to my post.

Well, I'm not necessarily searching for a doctoral dissertation. I just need to see enough thoughtfulness to be reassured that you're intelligent and informed on the issues, as opposed to, "I think everyone on this forum needs to get laid and/or try shrooms (but no hard drugs, you intellectually-lazy mofos)." Btw, I think this post I'm responding to is a lot better than your previous ones. I'm starting to like you again. Ha! Seriously though, if you had spent your initial post asking us what we believed instead of coming in with your guns blazing, we wouldn't have had to go through all this crap. And, your stupid part of this thread lasts for over 12 hours. Were you drunk that long?

Even if you did graduate with top honors from a good college, you were still ignorant/uneducated about the issues we were discussing in this thread. Nobody on this forum, to my knowledge, claims to be absolutely certain that there is no intelligence behind the origin of the universe. Most broadly speaking, we are simply unconvinced about the existence of any God entity i.e. we do not believe it until we are presented with sufficient evidence. Ergo, I would wager that we believe essentially the same thing you do. In fact, we consider ourselves to be agnostic atheists. We define theism and atheism as a dichotomy; either you believe in God or you don't. We use agnosticism as a qualifier, a description of knowledge. Someone who doesn't think God exists, but isn't certain, is an agnostic atheist. Someone who thinks God exists, but isn't certain, is an agnostic theist.

On the previous page, other people already explained this to you, and you just responded with the tripe, "Everyone else in the worlds defines atheism as disbelief in God and agnosticism as not knowing. So if you want to sit around and yank it and tell me that in your world a hat is a four-legged animal that says meow, you have fun with that. No offense." Apart from the fact that you were simply arguing semantics by this point and that your analogy isn't much more than a dishonest insult, I can make a very strong case that how we use these terms do not contradict dictionary definitions and a decent case that they are more reasonable as well. The word is a-theism, which means without theism. We disbelieve God, which can just mean that we don't believe in God; it's not necessarily denial. But, we are not certain i.e. we don't "know." That is how all the regular members of this forum define agnosticism and atheism. That is how many if not most popular non-theists define it. That is how most people at my university's Secular Student Union defines it. Overall, I know more people who use this definition than your definition.   

But, you don't have to use my definition. It's semantics; as long as it doesn't get in the way of us understanding each other, it's inconsequential. You came into this forum with a strawman, and you've been arguing semantics ever since.   

Perhaps. However, I contend that you still look like the biggest jerk here, by far.

Lol. Notice the smiley face. I'm just kidding about the habitual drinking thing, man.

Edit: Oh yeah. Also, my assumption can't be sweeping because you're only one person.

Oh? So, you're going to discriminate just because that's what everyone else does?

No. Not at all. I already know at least one person who found those couple sentences to be extremely arrogant.

It can, you just have to put them in yourself.  It's a normal ubb "["quote"]["/quote]" tag, without the quotation marks.

What?  The quote button doesn't work?

That is what I am using to make a full quote job here.  Just for fun, in a couple of hours, the FEDEX man is bringing me brand new Archos 5 handheld, and I will try it from that as well.

You did it again.  I was thinking on simply resting on my previous post but...

Since you disagree with the definitions I presented we are left to believe you still think "atheism IS theism" ?  

Everyone here without exception has stuck their foot in their mouth at some point in their lives. I can only speak for myself. What bothers me, more than an ignorant statement made by someone else(not just you) but anyone, isn't that they say it. It is that they hit and run and wont make the attempt to defend what they say in a rational manor.

You should regret what you say, not because we are trying to force anyone to like us. You should regret what you say because you did not formulate a coherent argument and had no intent on defending your position.

We have thick skins, we will not melt like an ice cube  under the sun. We have heard it all before. What bothers me most is when people don't stick around to try to explain why they say what they say.

It gets heated on this board for both the believer and the atheist sometimes. You don't have to sugar coat your opinions to us, but don't run from what you say, and don't base it on an emotional kneejerk reaction to hearing something you are not used to hearing.

All I have seen this site  ask for when theists debate us is not to preach or spam or threaten us(physically). Other than that, it's members have really heard it all before. The atheists here have been equated to Hitler, Stalin. We have been called evil and immoral. We have been threatened with hell. None of that bothers us, at least not me.

Hit and run posting does bother most here  because it shows the insecurity of the person doing it and the lack of an argument to boot.

Dont feel bad about sticking your foot in your mouth, we all do it. But if you are going to stay, simply try to make an argument for your position and have an equally thick skin as we do, and do not take what we say personally.

We have never met you in person. You could be the nicest person in the world, we don't know. This is all about claims, and strictly the claim any person may make, and even on subjects not even dealing with a god claim.

you idiots, now I'll never get his wallet!