Fuck me. Are you actually telling me you agree with me? After this rattling me to no end for the whole day... I dunno how I feel about your comment, but it's a good feeling.

It's like, he (and Dawkins before him) didn't even understand how this thing is used.

I can see how that unfolds. I've said it before: I don't understand religion. I don't understand how a person can be religious, or can believe in a deity (or multiple), or follow religious texts with that special reverence. I'm a natural atheist.

I'm also an angry motherfucker. I've been angry for a long time, and I expect to continue to be angry for a long time in the future.

I've ranted about religiosity and religion before. I was of very low opinion of religion and the believers. What Hitchens et al. seem to me are myself if I hadn't stopped ranting. It's what would happen had I not met rd95, who, to me, represents the brightest side of human existence - and just happens to be religious. "So maybe religion is not an awful thing after all" that came to me because of that didn't occur to Hitchens et al., so they kept on ranting.

That's my take. I expect to be many layers of wrong about it, because life and human beings are complex and can't be represented by a single event. It does seem strikingly similar, though, and I'm trying to project my blueprint onto the situation to see how well it fits.