"That is disrespectful to me, my beliefs and my religion, and I take offense" is the excuse and emotional attack religious people resort to, to my reaction to their efforts to preach and confront my atheism.

Of course, ignore the very idea of poking their noses into my personal beliefs, which are based on absolute rationality, facts and evidence accumulated by the thousands of hard working, "honest to God", intelligent, and dedicated scientists before me. Of course, ignore the fact that they (the religious lot) refuse to believe, the many facts science has, with diligent research, proven to us and enlightened us, and would replace them with what age old, obsolete, incomprehensible and incoherent books have to say, and the only reason is because they believe their God said so. Of course, ignore the fact that the instruments they use for their preaching, cell phones, TV, and many other aspects of life they comfortably take for granted on a daily basis, modern medicine, the surplus of food that they have at their disposal (thanks to modern agriculture), sanitation, clean water, electricity and gas are all products of science! If none of it were invented, chances are, most of us (human beings), would be long dead by the time we would reach the age of 5 and God would send most of those children to burn in the eternal flames of hell for the rest of eternity just because they were born to a different religion. Mind you, I am not talking about a particular religion, I am speaking of religion in general, every religion persuades its followers to think that they are the truly blessed once and anyone else born into another religion is going to burn in the eternal flames of hell for the rest of eternity, unless they convert. What audacity to make such arrogant and baseless claims! Anyone who knows me well (my friends and foes alike), would undoubtedly describe me as an extremely self-confident and arrogant bastard; and even my arrogance does not remotely compare to such insanity. I wonder if they ever stop to think of the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, they are not the center of the universe!

So I, with the lack of all respect to any religious institute, with their myths, beliefs, practices and fabrications of truth, take serious offense at how they think that they have the right to judge me solely based on the idea that I am an atheist, who grouped together with murderers, rapists and other such scum of the earth will burn in the eternal flames of hell for the rest of eternity. I have no respect for such men and women solely for the fact that they have no rational minds left in them to make logical judgments of their own, let alone “debate” on any reasonable topic; so much so that their self-righteous, loud and appalling disrespect, criticism and even murderous intent (quite often executed with unimaginable cruelty) toward a fellow human being, whether they be an atheist or of another religion can be as baseless and irrational as racism and sexism.

I end this piece with:

A quote by Steven Weinberg:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

A narration by Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996) on the first picture ever taken of the Earth from outside our Solar System and a quote:

Pale Blue Dot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M&eurl

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

A book by Richard Dawkins:

The God Delusion: http://www.richarddawkins.net/firstChapter,1