I actually don’t quite like the phrasing of that. To be honest, they do have a right to be offended — they just don’t have a right to prevent others from causing that offense.

A week or so ago, a high-school classmate of mine posted on her Facebook page, this quote:

Atheism: the belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense.

Like many of the things she posts (she’s a teabagger), I found that offensive. She had every right to post it, and I have every right to take offense at it. It’s a grotesque mis-representation of what Big Bang theory actually claims, and it says a lot more about the ignorance of the typical Christian than it does about atheist beliefs.

But, again, I have the right to take offense — I just don’t have the right to prevent her from posting stupid, offensive things, nor do I have the right to demand anyone else do so.

I responded with the obvious parallel quote:

The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

Ironically, she took offense, insisting that my (borrowed) characterization of Christianity was unfair and inaccurate.