awkward questions part 1

So, here I am, chilling out on this fine specimen of a Monday evening, eating nectarines and cream and sipping some of 'dat demon Pepsi.

I've discovered this site where atheists get together to talk about religion. I say talk. I say atheists. The majority of atheists I've met in my natural have been as personable as you like, and very tolerant of other's beliefs. These guys have dedicated a website to their intense hatred of religion, mainly Christianity. I started reading, for shits and giggles, and found myself so furious I had to get involved. It's the generalisations that piss me off.

Anyone who believes in Christianity can't think very much... stupid Christians who regurgitate whatever their pastors tell them without even considering why... gay-bashing, abortionist-bombing fundies taking over the world...

Seriously. Give me a break.

So, I went to the comments page, left a comment disagreeing with something one of the site's creators had said about Easter. No one replied, although they did reply to something someone else said ("fucking Christian dumbass!"). I leave another comment. Something to the effect of "come on guys, i'm waiting, prove me wrong, come destroy my faith why don't you?".

Now I'm embroiled in a vicious debate about whether it's possible to disprove the existence of god, whether religious experience can count as objective proof. It's making my head hurt. I think I'm holding my corner, but it's difficult to tell when the person you're arguing with would rather tell you to 'fuck off and die' then tell you if you've made a point. Thus, I can't actally tell if I'm making sense or not, because they'll never concede that I've made sense.

I only went on the site to see how I could hold up under atheist attack. Why can't I get into arguments with grown-ups?

(I put my homepage down, I'm waiting for one of them to come find me here and rip me to shreds.)

The other interesting thing on this site is a questionairre for Christians that poses the nastiest most awkward questions this guy could think of and gives Christians a chance to fill in the boxes and... make their defence, as it were, so to speak. I gave it a try and it was interesting actually, a real challenge. Atheists ask the kind of awful questions that other Christians tend not to, some of it was stuff I'd never had to think about it before.

Again, I think I explained how I see it, I didn't resort to "um woteva jsus luvs you and i'll pray for til you find da lord in yur life!", so they might even take me seriously. Again, I got the horrible feeling I was being tested.

Thought I'd throw this one open, it's the one I took the longest time to think of a response to:

Jesus apparently died for us, facing god's wrath in our place. Why did he have to do this? Why couldn't god forgive us anyway? Why does god - a perfect being - have negative, human-based emotions like anger and wrath? Is not the whole concept absurd?

My answer was something along the lines of - we needed to know a wrathful god before we could appreciate forgiveness.. anger itself is not a negative emotion, it's channeling that anger in the wrong way that's sinful.

I wasn't very clear about it though, because I'm... not very clear about it. So what do you think? Christians, atheists and Meffists alike - what's your opinion on all dat jazz?

Update: Should have posted this originally, the site is www.religionisbullshit.com, content belongs to them not me, any views expressed are theirs not mine... blah blah.