This caught my eye:

When I wrote I Sold My Soul on eBay, my Christian publishers were excellent to work with and never tried to change the true meaning of what I was writing. But my editor’s suggestions were often along the lines of, “Christians will tune out if you say this that bluntly. You have to tone it down for them.”

It all speaks to this idea you have to be gentle with Christians or they won’t be able to handle it. You must sanitize what you present to them because they won’t be able to take it if you’re “too real.” Christians so often create their own insulated, isolated reality because the real world doesn’t agree with their views. You have to treat Christian beliefs with kid gloves. Any deviation must be resisted.

No wonder non-Christians don’t pay much attention to Christian pop culture. We prefer the truth, no matter what tone it takes, no matter what it tells us. You’ll never hear the phrase, “Be careful what you say. You might offend the atheists!”

This is the first time I’ve heard Hemant say this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the first time he’s said it publicly. At the time I think he must have given in to the pressure, but my impression is that Hemant has gotten a lot blunter since the days when he was complainging about “angry atheists.”

The shift in Hemant’s tone feels a bit weird to me, gets me thinking “what happened to being the Friendly Atheist?” But I know this reaction makes no sense. Rather obviously, it’s a shift towards the kind of tone I’m inclined to take.

More than that, though, the shift really isn’t weird at all. It’s very natural. I’ve noticed this in myself a bit – I was never that nice about religion, but some of the things Dawkins and the FFRF say used to may me uncomfortable, and that’s far from being true anymore.

Why would someone like me or Hemant shift like that? Maybe it’s getting comfortable hearing that rhetoric from other atheists. Maybe it’s getting used to the idea that our main audience is atheists, so we don’t have to worry so much about offending religious readers so much.

Of course, it’s a mistake to separate out tone and substance. My actual views on religion have shifted around in subtle ways over the years, tending towards the more negative if anything. Exhaustion may keep that from getting through on the blog – one shift is that I’m less inclined to think talking about religion is worth my time.

I’m rambling a bit here. Anyone who thinks they have an insight into these dynamics, please do post in the comments.