darth_ender said:
When one says, "I think maybe God wasn't helping you," or, "Maybe you just have more natural talent than you realize," I guess I don't don't see it as condescending, but merely expressing a different point of view. But when one says, "No, you did that completely on your own," with simple matter-of-factness, it seems more demeaning. Really, I guess it comes down to whether one precedes his comment with a phrase noting the subjectivity of his perspective. When Leo made his comment, I don't believe he made any such note, which is why I commented as I did. But I do believe he meant it in genuine kindness.
I feel like you hold a pretty tight double standard here. You get offended when an atheist boldly claims, "There is no God", but you wouldn't hesitate to even more boldly claim there is a God, and not only that, but claim you have a relationship with him and know what he wants or what things annoy him.
An example from the same post:
It's when our pride in our own achievement exceeds our humility for his blessings that he becomes annoyed.
In both cases of, "I think maybe God wasn't helping you" and, "No, you did that completely on your own", it is merely a different point of view being expressed, and neither are intended as condescension.
Warbler is a talented signer, clearly. I must admit it saddens me a little bit that he can't accept that and take pride in it (which he has every right to do), but instead feels the need to give all credit to some supernatural force and continue to consider himself worthless and talentless, which is clearly far, far from the truth.
You have non believers who get really nervous before some public performance and end up nailing it when it comes time to perform all the time, Warb is telling himself they are much better than him, when in reality, he may be just as good or better than a lot of them.
There is nothing in the above paragraph meant as condescension, it is Warbler's story filtered through my godless worldview. Likewise, when Leo says he knows God doesn't exist, once filtered through your theistic worldview, it is offensive because it is pretty much slapping God in the face (you mentioned something before along the lines of feeling that we were disrespecting God with some of the stuff we are saying).
I for one love it! I like trying to see different worldviews, and hearing the perspective of different people as seen through their own particular color sunglass lens shade.