I mean I guess I could sub in 'many reasonable definitions'... and I guess you're assuming the stress on all of this is 'atheist', not 'militant'. I guess you did not make it past the first sentence to the second sentence where I referred to 'publicly atheist'. Or the emphasis I placed in the follow up on saying I don't consider self-proclaimed atheists, cult leaders, etc who are really just trying to be the center of their own religion genuine examples of the belief they claim. Or the whole point and tone of the piece to be a reminder that tone and setting can have a very strongly negative reaction beyond what the actual logic of the arguments - which I also said I mostly agreed with in the original post - might warrant. I also think it's accurate to say Kim's every bit as much an atheist as David Koresh was a Christian, and I could come up with a massive heap of other examples.

Would it help, by the way, if I pointed out that the 'any reasonable' part was aimed at the word 'militant', and not 'atheist', maybe I didn't make that clear last post when I said that atheism is considered the de facto state religion of communist regimes. I am saying that the brutal military dictator is militant by any reasonable definition, but yes, even that should be 'many' not 'any' I suppose.

But let's just stress this point, message is a reply to Tom's "Militant atheism is somewhat amusing" title with my title follow-up to that being 'somewhat irrational at times too' with the first sentence being kinda a separate animal from the main body of the message, stressing what I view as the absurdity of someone actually deciding to call themselves 'militant' about their views on religion, in an era where referring to oneself as a 'militant Christian' or 'militant Muslim' would have most people understandably edging away from you. Are you catching yet that the whole point of the piece focuses around what I view as an almost absurdly irrational approach by people towards public relations? I'm actually genuinely sorry by the way, I know I'm being a rude prick right now but I just can't believe you've totally managed to fixate on that 'any reasonable' when I'd just take as a given that people would recognize it as hyperbole and recognize I'm stressing the 'militant' part.

So, let me just really nail this down, my opinion is that it is a bad idea to amplify, rather than dampen, anything which might cause negative mental connections to appear in the mind of one's target audience. At least if you're trying to convince them of your point (doubly so if one's core point is that that person isn't a very rational thinker but prone to go off emotion) and that setting up parallels, intentional or not, fair or not, with psychotic madmen is a really bad way to do that. And that generally 'militant' is also not a word wise people tend to tack on to the front of their self-description. I find it surprising, confusing, and a touch amusing that a group who's main selling point is the concept of acting rationally would ignore the very rational consideration of their public image.

Again, exactly which part of all of this do you disagree with?