If religious people deny paradise to their opponents or to 'non-believers,' atheists would likewise seek to eliminate 'dangerous' believers with their 'childish' ways and their heads in the clouds.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
A dominant misconception among believers is that their atheist brethren are a slavering pack of hell-bound debauchees, gleefully wining and wenching their way through life while loudly professing their amorality.
No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
Empty-brained triflers who have never tried to think, who take their creed as they take their fashions, speak of atheism as the outcome of foul life and vicious desires.
The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
Atheists have not produced so much evil as hypocrites have produced, or even simply those who preached God without being prepared for Him, daring to pronounce His name with unsanctified lips.
While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.
Even if you don't believe in God, exploring fully the idea of a god or gods should pose no threat to you.
Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.
Atheists are pious people.