Those Angry Atheists…
June 20, 2007 by TJM Admin
Most of the emails that I receive regarding this site usually start off with the old familiar phrase, “Why are you atheists so angry at God?” God, I love those questions!
First of all, this is a horrible question on a couple of levels. To start with, it is a broad question that mistakes the group for the individual. I could easily ask a similar question, “Why are Catholic Priests pedophiles?” This is an atrocious mistake as not all Priests are child molesters and not all child molesters are Priests. The question would be better phrased, “Why are you angry with God,” which brings us to the second classic mistake.
Atheists, whether they categorize themselves as a “weak atheist” or “strong atheist,” do not believe in God. More appropriately stated, atheists do not believe in ANY gods! Therefore, it is impossible to be angry with something which you do not believe in.
Now, if you were to zero in on the real question, you could certainly evoke a response from me. That question would be, “Why are you angry with religion?” To that question, I could give you a plethora of answers! Of course, I do not pretend to speak for all atheists, but I am sure that many of them would agree with some of my reasons as well as add their own.
- Religion stifles the growth of knowledge. (see The Dark Ages, the Library of Alexandria, Galileo being brought before the Pope…) Of course, fundamentalism is the true culprit here. Unfortunately, there are quite a few people who sincerely believe that their holy book (the Bible, for example) is the actual word of their god.
- Religion (at least, most of the major ones) requires a suspension of logic.
- Religion has become intricately entwined with politics. This has some very obvious consequences when it comes to law making and even in the minds of voters when electing their officials. (Fortunately, there is at least ONE openly atheist Congressman. Thanks, California.)
- Speaking of politics, why CAN’T I buy a car if I want to on a Sunday? Blue Laws are antiquated and it is time to get rid of them.
- Atheists are the least trusted people among Americans. Why? Because the uneducated masses don’t believe that you can be an ethical, moral person without a belief in god.
I know that I could go on with this list, but I think that you get the general drift of the message. As always, I welcome your comments!
Or there’s always the short answer - “Why are you crazy zealots so angry at unicorns?”
We’re angry because it’s almost impossible to live comfortably/casually as an atheist without some sort of religious intrusion into our lives. We should have the freedom to be governed by laws based on logic and consensual morality rather than antiquated texts from the Dark Ages.
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I always ask why they are so angry at Judas.
I mean he did so much for the faith but everybody downs him.
They really hate that.
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Maybe I’m qualified to take a crack at this. I am an angry atheist, I’m a blogger, and I often go on the attack against what I see as outrageous behavior in the name of religion - so if someone complains about “those angry atheists” that they saw online, they might very well be talking about me. I’m cool with that.
This is why I’m angry: there are Constitutional protections for religions in this country, but they were hardly even used for the first century and change of United States history. It seems that everyone was pretty much happy with the idea that everyone was either Catholic or Protestant. Throughout the twentieth century, however, the Supreme Court decided case after case in favor of minority religions, like Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons (okay, not the polygamy thing, but you can’t win them all). After WWII, it was okay to be Jewish, and law and society started accepting Jewish traditions, like the Saturday Sabbath (Shabbat). After Cassius Clay became Mohammed Ali, Islam became more widely accepted and understood - although that came with a price, thanks to the Islamist regimes of the Middle East. The Beatles sought transcendentalism, and Eastern traditions became downright fashionable.
But what about atheists?
The last century of American history seems to be an ecclesiastical orgy of pluralism, a hugfest for anyone who believed in anything. And yet, still, atheists were resoundingly refused by all, because “none of the above” wasn’t one of the choices that were allowed. We were somehow worse than Satanists, Communists, and Nazis all rolled into one: the ultimate threat to a society infatuated with accepting all belief structures.
To this day, there are seven states with laws on the books that prevent atheists from taking public office or even testifying in court. Sure, there’s protection of religious freedom - as long as you believe in “God,” whatever your brand might be. And sure, it’s easy enough for us to pose as any one of those religions, and it’s easy to just bow our heads in prayer when everyone else does, and it’s easy to just put our hand on the bible and swear ourselves under oath like everyone else - but why the hell should we? Why should we have to pretend? Why should we have to disguise our beliefs just to make everyone else comfortable and satisfied within their wishes for grand uniformity? As long as atheists are being left out of the all-faith hugfest, then these alleged religious protections are worthless.
We are constantly ridiculed, left out, and scorned - and, by and large, nobody has to do so under cover, or behind closed doors, because it’s quite acceptable in our society to bash on atheists. We are constantly used as the straw man for anyone who believes that morality only comes from churches. When we show up at the voting booth, our choices are between two or maybe three candidates, each of which have given nearly all their precious campaign time to fawning over religious groups and proving how religious and devoted they are.
And why is all this? Just because we don’t believe in the supernatural. That’s what god is - a supernatural being. It exists in the same dimension as werewolves, vampires, fairies, and ghosts. What would people say if I walked around talking about vampires all the time as if they were real? I’d be called nuts, perhaps tossed in a comfy white room somewhere to soak up some brain-erasing drugs. But if you walk around talking about a dead god rising from the dead like a zombie, and saying that you eat his flesh and drink his blood, then you’re called devout, and considered a pillar of the community. Hell, if you place your faith in the supernatural over hundreds of years of scientific study, then you get a $27 million Creation Science Museum - or maybe a place in the Republican presidential race.
I’m angry as well because if there’s something I admire, it’s proof and scientific merit. When I see school boards trying to put their thinly-veiled creationism into science classes - SCIENCE classes, the kind of science that the big-time churches have spent most of the last millennium trying to keep quiet - and thousands of otherwise thoughtful individuals putting aside any semblance of common sense to try to pass off their ultimately disproved religious belief as scientific, I am outraged. Those fertile young minds in those classrooms are getting filled with enough of that religious nonsense at home and on Sundays - science class damned well better be doing science, the kind that deals with hypotheses and proofs and laws and theorems.
Our anger - or at least mine - isn’t because of what anyone believes. It’s because of what they do. People can believe whatever they want; it’s none of my business. If they want to run their Sunday support groups, fine. If they want to send each other that “Footprints” poem nine thousand times a day via email, whatever. But when they publicly ridicule anyone who doesn’t believe in their god, when they try to insert their beliefs into the classes where my daughter will be studying science, when they try to call me a child abuser because I refuse to teach her to believe in this system of guilt and shame, when they act as a political group but jealously clutch their tax-exempt status… this is all too much.
And so I have fought back, and I will continue to fight back. I will always reciprocate the respect I am given - when someone speaks to me respectfully about any of this, they will be answered with respect, and when my patriotism, my integrity, or my morality is cast automatically into doubt just because of my beliefs, then I will respond just as viciously. I have no preference for one method over the other, but rest assured, either way I will always oppose the oppression of religious influence, wherever I meet it. Whenever some zealots are off on a tear because they think they need to restore the “Christian nation” that the founders created, I’ll be there holding the First Amendment - because when 99% of the population is either Christian or apathetic, then the task falls to me, and those few like me, to keep this nation from becoming a theocracy, and to defend both myself and my Constitution from the onslaught of malignant religious influence.
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Okay, I read it over. I think I left something out.
Yes, those are many of the reasons I’m angry with the people who push religion on me and my family. But I’ve said this often enough, too: if there were a god, I still wouldn’t worship him. If you could give me irrefutable proof, if you could get me a face to face meeting with god - I still wouldn’t take a knee. So if there really is a god, I’ve got some serious issues with him.
Who kills more people in the bible? God. Who asks people to mutilate their genitalia? God. Who forces fathers to sacrifice their children? God. Who destroys entire towns because he doesn’t like them? God. Who created an entire planet just to house humans like some creatures in a zoo, and then casts them into an eternal pit of fire if they don’t behave the way they want? God.
This god figure is a petulant, childish, churlish little brat. He throws temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way, he’s willing to ignore huge percentages of his little pet creations for the sake of aggrandizing a select few favorites, and he’s the one that tempted Adam, not Eve. He places loyalty above knowledge. He places blind faith above wisdom. This is not a kind, all-loving god! You get me that face-to-face meeting with god, and I’ll deliver the first kick in the nads, because if there’s a deity that deserves to get knocked off his high horse, it’s the Judeo-Christian Yahweh.
Let’s look at just how this “god” handles situations, like when Lucifer “tried to usurp his power.” Okay, if you want to take all this biblical nonsense literally, just what was it that Lucifer did exactly? How does an archangel try to “usurp” god’s “power?” Just walk up behind him with a dagger? Maybe spread a few lies? No. It’s because of Adam’s first wife - no, Eve was not the first woman, but Lilith was. Well, Lilith wasn’t good enough for Adam, though; she wouldn’t put out on command. As punishment, god cast her out of Eden. Lilith was then spotted by Lucifer, and the two hit it off - physically. Lucifer was so impressed by this sex trick (angels never thought of it themselves, apparently) that he shared it with all his friends - 1/3 of the host of angels. God finds out (how he didn’t know all along, I don’t know) and calls Lucifer - thus began the showdown between Lucifer and god, with Lucifer calling on his buddies in the war of heaven between his 1/3, which became the fallen angels, and god’s loyalists.
Is this story true? Absolutely not. But it’s the only answer I’ve ever found for why god and Lucifer couldn’t just play nice. And it didn’t come from the bible - it’s the Satanists that tell this particular story, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re just as reliable a source of information as Christians. I haven’t a clue where they got this sordid tale - some forgotten book from the Dead Sea Scrolls, or some ancient Gnostic text, or some long-edited part of the bible, I don’t know. But doesn’t it just fit? Doesn’t it answer some questions? Doesn’t it rather suit the personality of god throughout the Old Testament? I think so, and it does so far better than any answer you’ll get from a Christian, which invariably says the word “usurps” without explanation. Seriously, does anyone even know what that word means these days, or is just used for Scrabble?
So yeah, I’m an angry atheist. I’m angry with these pretentious, arrogant Christians that try to force the entire world into their vision of hegemony and uniformity. They try to force their morals upon me, and they take over the entire government just to turn their ancient desert cult into law. And, all the while, they scream at the top of their lungs that they’re being oppressed. Hah! That’s worked on plenty of atheists - they pretend they’re being attacked, and the atheist is silenced out of guilt and fear. Well, not me. If an overbearing religious zealot wants to gripe about how their precious religion is being attacked, I will be there to point out that their religion was not being attacked before - but I’ll be happy to oblige them. And I’m not confining myself to Christians, either - Jews and Muslims are more than welcome here, as well, being the other 2/3 of this set of unholy triplets.
And for their god - which I maintain does not exist - I maintain an entirely hypothetical anger. In everyday use, it reminds me that no deity is worth worshiping, and it means that even when they had the chance to make up a religion on any god they wanted, they made their god a jerk - which says a lot about them!
So, if this question was meant to honestly find out why atheists are so angry - or, at least, some atheists, like myself - then there’s a heaping helping of reasons. And if it was just to put atheists up on a pedestal for the purpose of scorn, well, right back at you - while I’m up here, I’ll kick sand in your eye.
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Why am I angry?
I am angry because the only place I can express my irreligious beliefs in on the web. I can not express my thoughts even in my own home. My wifes family are devout catholics and “Coming Out” would bring an end to our marriage. I am angry because I can not express my beliefs at work because my boss is very religious and could not tolerate an atheist working with her.
I am angry because atheism is not respected as a viable alternative to (insert any religion here).
But, I would rather be an angry person who is perusing the truth than a happy one who claims to have found it in the God.
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Why i’m angry
Honestly because i can’t keep up reasoning with religionists. I mean those who know how to defend their faith. I hate reasoning with ignorant xtians who don’t even know what they believe. They were many of them. It gives me no challenge.
I can rant, mock around them but it’s to no avail if i don’t even know too much what i’m mocking about. It’s all my subjective feelings bursting out of me. Few xtians can reason and if they do they give me a run for my money. Must find a way to get back at them
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