The battle of the overly zealous atheists versus the I'm gonna cry about it believers

Religion is always a tricky subject. No matter what you believe in (or don't believe in), chances are that you have gotten into some terrible debate about it. Someone is going to wind up getting defensive. I don't really care what you believe in as long as you accept the fact that my beliefs are my own, and that you try to be a good person because you want to be a good person, and not because someone else told you that you should be. If you want to spread your religion to others show them why they should share your beliefs. Don't tell them that they'll go to hell if they don't-because according to the New Testament, that's not how Jesus got all his followers. And don't tell people they're idiots for believing in a bunch of hocus pocus because that's just going to make people angry.

Typically I've found it's the believers who tend to get all up in your face with the "this is what you should believe in business." From billboards stating "What part of 'thou shall not kill' don't you understand?"-God, to pamphlets at Halloween declaring:

"There is good and bad news for you. The bad news: You are a sinner. The penalty for sin is death."

Flip the page to see a little smiley face and "The good news: with Jesus Christ you can hope to find your way to Heaven :)"

However, the atheists (at least in Britain) are stepping it up a notch to compete in this "who can be the number one asshole?" game. They're doing pretty well. Here are three examples:

1) Atheist ads on buses and in Underground trains. At first I thought that this was kind of cool. Then I thought about it a bit more and found it kind of obnoxious. Are people going to change their religious beliefs because of a bus ad? I certainly hope not. Will it make people annoyed? Most definitely. One bus driver already refused to drive any bus with the ad on it. And a group of Christians responded with this ad, which I find more obnoxious than the atheist one. 

2) The next two might not be directly fueled by atheists, but there is an overbearing sense of secularization at any cost. A nurse was suspended without pay for asking a patient if she could pray for her. Okay, so she shouldn't have done it, but what's the big deal? Did she say, "If you don't pray, you will die and go to hell?" No, she asked if she could say a prayer so that the woman would get better. She didn't try to convert anyone. Did anyone consider that this woman was being kind? I tutored ESL for a while and one of my students was so happy that her English was improving that she ran outside, brought her husband inside, and asked him to tell me that she was going to pray for my happiness in the future. Did I scoff at her and tell her that this was an unacceptable way to talk to your tutor? No! I thought I was going to cry because her remarks were so heartwarming. 

3) This story disgusts me most of all. A woman's daughter got told off for talking about heaven in school. The mother was brought to the headmaster's office and informed that her daughter should not be discussing these things in school. The woman went to her church and some friends to ask for support, and as a result, may be fired from her job. What??? Oh, guess what? Her daughter is 5! Five years old. You can convince five year olds that rain is made up of God's tears, that monsters will eat them if they don't eat their vegetables, and that thunder is really just angels bowling. How is a five year old going to understand that the God she has been told to believe in her whole life is not acceptable for the schoolroom? Talking about religion when you're young is how you break stereotypes about other religions. I learned when I was about 7 that Jews didn't believe in Santa, when I was 8 I knew that Muslims were the people who made all that noise early in the morning while I waited for the school bus, and informed a Protestant friend when I was 10 that Catholics didn't necessarily believe that all non-Catholics went to hell. Throughout my life I've had friends who've been deeply hurt because of how others view their beliefs. But not discussing it doesn't make religious differences disappear, instead it solidifies them and makes them harder to overcome. That little girl is going to grow up being very confused about what she is supposed to believe in. Is her mom right? Is her teacher right? What has she done wrong? This is a lot for a 5 year old to grasp.

Why should religion be singled out in this way? Why is the kid's mom potentially going to lose her job? If her daughter had called another child fat and said he/she ate too many biscuits, would the mom be in the same spot? No. The daughter would probably be pulled aside and would be told that's not polite, the mom would probably get a phone call, but that'd be it. Unless the kid started bullying other kids or becoming a consistent problem. I firmly believe in the separation of church and state, but I'm not sure that a five year old expressing her beliefs is a violation. Keeping a monument of the Ten Commandments outside a US court house? Yes. Outlawing gay marriage on the principle that marriage is sacred? Yes. Five year old talking about heaven? Absolutely not.