Are Atheists Angry at God?
by Noah Lugeons
There are plenty of stereotypes about atheists that piss me off, but among my least favorite is this notion that atheists were driven to disbelief by their “anger at god”. Screenwriters and religious bigots would love for you to believe that atheists became atheists because god wasn’t there for them in their time of need. They’d love for you to believe that atheism is the byproduct of trauma that we’re all still working through.
But on this subject and many others, Carlin said it best. I became an atheist right around the age of reason. The same can be said of most atheists. Some of us have great stories about our deconversion, but most of us can’t pinpoint a single time or date or significant precursor. We just slowly came to realize that religion was bullshit.
That’s not to say that nobody becomes an atheist after a traumatic event. I’m sure there are plenty of stories of devoutly religious people abandoning their faith after personal tragedies, but to be fair there are also plenty of stories of nominally religious or non-religious people embracing faith after similar events. Either way, these anecdotes are in the minority. Most atheists are atheists because they correctly employ logic.
But if you cut the sentence short and put the question mark two words sooner, the answer is very different, and I think that’s why theists have such an easy time believing the cliche. Atheists are angry. We’re not angry at god, we’re angry at religion, but I can see how it’s difficult for a theist to draw a distinction there. It has to be hard to step completely outside the religious worldview, but if they did, I think they could see fairly easily why pretending to speak for god would piss off people who don’t believe in god.
I don’t know that this is an understanding that some theists can reach, but I offer the Venn-diagram anyway. It’s not as much for them as it is for all the other atheists that are sick and fucking tired of pretentious religious fuck-munches who, upon hearing that they are atheists, respond with a condescendingly ostentatious display of pity and the words, “what happened?”
The Scathing Atheist 
So what are atheist angry at?
The implications of a group asserting social jurisdiction on the perceived authority of an imaginary being. Sorry, thought that was clear by the analogy.
We used to have a Bat Shit atheist in Kansas City. He called him a militant atheist and posted stuff like “crawl under a rock and die” and told Christians they would “end up in a ditch like Jimmy Hoffa” on the Bill Tammeus blog.
But that cock sucker got caught.
Yes, I was careful to ensure that the “Bat Shit Crazy” field overlapped the Atheist field. Though, of course, the vast majority of bat-shit crazy people are religious and generally highly religious.
The correlation between insanity and religiosity is something that few religious people are comfortable talking about, but it is undeniable. Well… sorry, I suppose for a lot of religious people nothing is “undeniable”.
I am familiar with these types of atheist outbursts:
http://deepthoughts123.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/my-recent-encounters-with-atheist-hypocrisy/
Aw, shucks, were those atheists picking on you for being a troll? Hope they didn’t hurt your widdle feelings.
If you can’t take being called out for being a troll, don’t be a troll. That’s pretty self-explanatory to most people, but I suppose others need it pointed out. Not sure what you get from antagonizing people and then getting upset with them for being antagonized but I suppose you do what it takes to feel superior to the people you disagree with.
I suppose that’s much more difficult when you’re religious…
I wasn’t trolling, I was debating evolution–which was the topic of his blog. Apparently he couldn’t stand the heat and the humiliation, so he resorted to ad hominem attacks. Unfortunately this is sort of behavior is not uncommon for many of his kind.
“Debating Evolution” is trolling, no matter how much you’d love to veil it in a cloak of intellectual integrity. My guess is that you demanded a reasoned response when what you deserved was a “go-fuck-yourself” response. So write a few more self-aggrandizing blogs where you pretend that atheists just can’t handle your massive intellect, but don’t expect me to waste any time doing anything but insulting you.
Aside from the fact that the linked “outburst” has nothing to do with this blog posting…
When I left the church, I realised that I’d previously had two different ways of dismissing anyone who took that course. If they’d been having a rough time (by any measure), they were angry at God, and therefore behaving irrationally. On the other hand, if they hadn’t, they must be too comfortable and had no need for God. Basically, you can safely ignore what they say in either case.
http://recoveringagnostic.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/satans-fork/
Haha. I came for the venn diagram and stayed for the troll smackdown. Definitely following.