Has General Discussion Been Hostile to Religious Believers recently?

[Prophet 451]

208. I think so

About three weeks ago, there was a thread about ISIS' sexual violence against the Yezidi and I posted "Jesus..." in teh subject line, with the candle-holding smiley as the body of teh message. Just that. Using "Jesus" as an exclamation and the smiley holding teh candle and someone thought it was important to respond to me saying that there was no Jesus.

(the below copied from another thread on similar lines)
I've been here for about thirteen years now. DU always had a contingent of atheists but that was fine, we didn't proselytize them and they didn't proselytize us. But in recent years, it all seems to boil down to "you're too dumb to see that we're right". They remind me of the sci-fi cliche (now thankfully, rather dated) of aliens who are told about religion and respond that they've outgrown such silly superstitions. It's all so shallow. The diversity and complexity of religious thought is ignored, substituted for the mindless pablum of literalism so they can dismiss faith as being about talking snakes and suchlike. There's no attempt to engage with or understand belief or believers, their fans are simply exhorted to go forth and sneeringly dismiss believers as just stupid. One can almost hear the strains of Onward Atheist Soldiers in the background.
In seeking to establish a place for atheism in the public psyche (laudable in itself), they seem to have adopted the worst excesses of theistic attitude (although, thankfully, not the worst excesses of theistic actions). They speak of believers in the same tone and often with the same words as Bryan Fischer speaks of atheists.

And when someone brings this up, the responses are predictable. I predict that if there are responses to this, them will be either A) childish reversals, "we're not x, you're x"; B) tiresome claims to not knowing who the "New Atheists" are; C) claims that the theists drive them to it ("she made me so angry&quot ; D) pointing out that many theists are jerks (which is true but missed the point) or E) simple flat denial and/or insults. Or they'll insist that, since you can't provide links (who saves links to annoying posts?), it never happened. Being insulted or our fa9ith being insulted is our own fault for holding the faith ("what do you expect, going out dressed like that?" or "love teh sinner, hate the sin&quot .