Quote Originally Posted by David88vert
She made a generalization about atheism, you make generalizations about Christianity? Exactly how is that "different", and "ok" when you do it? I'm interested in your explanation on this one. :-)
Actually that one's pretty easy. Christianity is a bunch of people united in a shared belief. Atheism is simply people who chose not to believe in one thing. That might not seem like a big difference, but think about it. Religon in general tends to be something that is central to a persons life and provides guiding principles on to live. Lack of religon has no such common thread.

Take as a crappy example, someone has a driver's license. We know they are at least 16, have at least a certain mental capacity, aren't blind etc... What about someone who doesn't? We know nothing about them other than they don't have a license. They could be 5, they could be 50. Maybe they don't feel the need to drive, maybe they can't pass the test. The point is membership to a group is a lot more telling than lack there of.

JC