Agressive atheist "support" forums

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Prodigal_40s

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I’ve noticed in a lot of forums on the internet, offering support for people with any mood disorders or anxiety/depression conditions and / or issues there is a staunch and hostile attitude toward religious people and especially Christians. I can’t really give specific examples but in message boards, there are forums that “discuss” atheists’ views and yet the Christian view is relegated to a single forum at best and the forum content is inundated with atheist bullies and trolls. I know it’s obvious to all of us that religion is being made a scapegoat for the failed realtivist experiment but we’re getting to the stage of all out persecution. I also think that atheists are FAR more preachy and convinced of their own views than we are.

Have you come across an atheist who’s relaxed, calm and open minded? For me, I’d say the majority are firmly rooted in the loud and belligerent group of Dawkins’ crowd. Back on topic though, these “support” forums are really dangerous because they create a view that religious people are insane and not to be trusted and should be ridiculed to impressionable and younger people as well as the vulnerable who might even connect their situation to religious people as a source of their problems.
 
If we’re talking about mental health forums, I don’t if this counts but I went on this metal health forum site, but I guess it’s not monitored well because there was thread about 9/11 and the posters posted things like “I don’t care about those victims” or “I’m glad it happened” and on another thread I saw someone post something like “Anti-racist is really anti-white.”

So I think there is a problem on these type of sites besides just the religion factor.
Prodigal_40s said:
Have you come across an atheist who’s relaxed, calm and open minded?
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Of course, there’s good and bad in every group of people.
 
It depends. Some atheists are what Ted Beale describes as “High Church” atheists, for whom their atheist identification is an essential part of their self-conception. They read atheist books, they attend atheist conventions, they read atheist blogs, they watch atheist YouTube videos, and they collect atheist arguments and counterarguments from such sources. They comment on any online news story that relates in any way to faith or religion to express their views against religion. You could say that their “religion” is an aggressive non-religion. In their private lives, they often tend to live a prim and rather respectable lifestyle more often than not and are often good parents and partners. Their opposition to the religious is usually based around emotional issues that relate to philosophical issues, such as the the problem of suffering and what they see as irreconcilable differences between biblical literalism and what they see as “science.” (If you ever hear someone refer to the supposed Euthyphro Dilemma as if you had never heard of it before, you are dealing with a High Church atheist.) They have usually received a fair to good education, often had a religious background which they jettisoned in late childhood to early adolescence, and tend to be a little nerdy. They are the ones you tend to see post most commonly.

Other atheists are “Low Church” atheists. They don’t do any of the above and would be hard-pressed to come up with a cogent argument against faith. They have no real interest in atheism qua atheism and don’t follow atheist media, they just don’t have religious beliefs and were either raised without a religion, received an indifferent generalized religion from their parents which they jettisoned in adolescence, or dropped religious faith because it opposed various lifestyle choices they want to be able to do, such as out-of-wedlock sex, homosexuality, and abortion, as well as a relativistic view of morality. (If you ever hear someone argue that Jesus said you can’t judge anyone for anything, you are dealing with a Low Church atheist.) They tend to have received an indifferent education. They aren’t really interested in arguing about religion, and probably just see it as something that is not relevant to their lifestyle - at most, they may enjoy making tasteless jokes about religious suspects, and have some beliefs that the Church executed Galileo and that the Crusades were somehow unprovoked. Their opposition to the religious is often based around emotional issues that relate to interpersonal and sexual issues, such as the supposed hypocrisy of churchgoers and the clergy, priestly celibacy, female ordination, or the abuse crisis. They rarely post about such issues on-line, but many of the atheists you meet in your day-to-day “real” life are in this group.

By using these stereotypes I’m of course painting atheists with a broad bush, and you could probably consider these as the two opposite poles of the atheist spectrum, with some in the middle and others tending towards either pole. Could be a useful way to understand the atheist phenomenon if you’re approaching someone with an evangelistic purpose, as you would need to slant your arguments to appeal to a specific type.
 
The Internet can be a very dangerous place, especially for those who are afflicted with mental illness or serious emotional problems. All I can say is:

I spent a great deal of time in a local psychiatric ward (where my daughter was held on four different occasions, suffering from oncoming deadly mental illness). I was there myself the day she died, voluntarily. Who helped me when I was there? Who helped her when she was there (other than ME who fought everyone all day every day to help her)? You know who?

THE OTHER PATIENTS.

I was in shock, I was medicated (heavily). I was cared for by the other patients (and this is in the first stage lock down ward). They brought me a chair when I came out of my room; they surrounded me; they encouraged me; they prayed for me; they talked to me about Jesus. At one point, I fell asleep in front of the TV and one of them covered me with a blanket and put a pillow under my head. I went in Wednesday evening 3/2/11, I came out (from the locked down ward) on Saturday morning 3/5/11, having been “diagnosed” as suffering from normal grief and not a threat to myself. The people I remember were there to tell me they will miss me, they will pray for me, they will remember me. And I will remember them.

There is a certain level of religious attachment (and often obsession with demons) to serious mental illness. For those who are so blessed, Christ is their anchor. He keeps them from despair in a situation where despair is oh, so easy. When one’s mind is failing (cognitively and actually degenerating as PET scans prove), it is quite difficult to stay in this world. My daughter was raised to love Jesus, she was wearing a crucifix, she was reading the Bible, but her illness was so complex and overwhelming that she could not live with it for one more day. There are others who are able, through the mercy of God and for His purpose. What might that purpose be: to allow people to suffer such agony that even the medications which treat it cause further agony? To show us that He is here, present, and often does intervene (when it is His will to do so). I consider such people to be wearing a crown of thorns. They are, to me, sanctified. And they teach us, above all, that ALL life is sacred, no matter how “damaged” the world may perceive it. Every living thing is an expression of God sustained by His Will and for a purpose not one of us knows.
 
Prodigal_40s said:
Have you come across an atheist who’s relaxed, calm and open minded?
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Yup. Most of the ones on here especially seem to be.

The Internet is most of the time not a good representation of any group…especially not on a mental health forum! So I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
 
DaddyGirl said:
I know many atheists who are relaxed, calm, and open minded.
** I also know many religious people who are loud and belligerent and preachy.
And vice versa on both counts.**
Personality style doesn’t have anything to do with if a person believes in a God or not.
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Too true. There’s some in every group unfortunately. :sad_yes:
 
The problem with the internet is that it has a lot of trolls… people who go around bashing those who don’t hold their views. They are not interested in reason or history, or meaningful discussion; they’re just out there to vent and stir up trouble. I would stay away from these places. Nobody is going to receive any actual support (something to help improve their lives) from them, just encouragement to continue their religion-bashing and historical revisionism (e.g. most to all wars were started because of religion).
 
Prodigal_40s said:
Have you come across an atheist who’s relaxed, calm and open minded? For me, I’d say the majority are firmly rooted in the loud and belligerent group of Dawkins’ crowd. Back on topic though, these “support” forums are really dangerous because they create a view that religious people are insane and not to be trusted and should be ridiculed to impressionable and younger people as well as the vulnerable who might even connect their situation to religious people as a source of their problems.
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A lot of the atheists I know are of the spittle-spewing, hate-filled, belligerent type. One of my old high school classmates is extreme, even for that crowd. I culled him from my Facebook friends because he couldn’t post on a status without throwing in an anti-religious diatribe (even statuses about the weather, what people had to eat, happy birthdays, etc.).

The ones I know personally who hold themselves to be calm, relaxed and open-minded are only calm, relaxed and open-minded when you’re agreeing with them. As soon as you question anything they say, they fly off the handle. The one who most prides himself on being the most peace-filled, open-minded, loving person on the planet posted something on Facebook a couple months ago and when I replied with a personal experience that ran counter to his claim, he put on his caps lock and said "BS! BS! BS!’ (although fully spelled out) a dozen or so times, then wrote a full paragraph (every 2nd or 3rd work being some derivative of the F-word) about how I was a liberty-trampling, woman-hating, Nazi fascist. He then blocked me for a few weeks.

My only friend who comes closest to fitting the bill of a calm, open-minded atheist is actually much more an agnostic whose very devout mother would drag him to Mass whenever she could, prayed for him constantly and always challenged his beliefs.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
It depends. Some atheists are what Ted Beale describes as “High Church” atheists, for whom their atheist identification is an essential part of their self-conception. They read atheist books, they attend atheist conventions, they read atheist blogs, they watch atheist YouTube videos, and they collect atheist arguments and counterarguments from such sources. They comment on any online news story that relates in any way to faith or religion to express their views against religion. You could say that their “religion” is an aggressive non-religion.

…

Other atheists are “Low Church” atheists. They don’t do any of the above and would be hard-pressed to come up with a cogent argument against faith. They have no real interest in atheism qua atheism and don’t follow atheist media, they just don’t have religious beliefs and were either raised without a religion, received an indifferent generalized religion from their parents which they jettisoned in adolescence, or dropped religious faith because it opposed various lifestyle choices they want to be able to do, such as out-of-wedlock sex, homosexuality, and abortion, as well as a relativistic view of morality.
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I think this is a pretty good distinction. I call the “High Church” atheists “militant atheists”. The others you describe are either people who are completely indifferent to religion (I think this is the fastest growing group), or are rebelling against Christianity in particular. (Note that there are plenty of non-Catholic Christian denominations who are ok with homosexuality, abortion, etc. so I don’t think this by itself would lead someone to choose atheism.)

I don’t feel like I fit in very well into the ‘High Church’/‘Low Church’ model though. I would describe myself as a materialist/metaphysical naturalist, but I value many of the cultural, ideological, artistic, ethical and other contributions made to society by certain religious institutions, like the Catholic Church. Also, I have no interest in atheist blogs, websites, books, etc.
 
I joined an atheist forum last Fall as an experiment in human behavior.

When they realized I believed in God they viciously and energetically attacked me.
Within a few days the thread I started had 700 replies, not views, replies.
It was impossible for me to reply to more than a tiny fraction of these replies.

Of course, all of these replies were garbage, nothing but screaming and insulting on the part of the posters.

An unmoderated forum like that is soon taken over by the loudest screamers,
and the more thoughtful members, if there are any, 🤷 are never heard from.

But, all the posters who screamed at me seemed like kids with an attitude. There was no maturity at all over there. Pathetic. 😊

I was banned and my thread was moved to the Enter The Darkness section which you can’t see unless you’re a registered member and signed in. Can’t see it myself, if it still exists.
 
This is one of the best posts I’ve ever come across in any forum.
Arizona_Mike said:
It depends. Some atheists are what Ted Beale describes as “High Church” atheists, for whom their atheist identification is an essential part of their self-conception. They read atheist books, they attend atheist conventions, they read atheist blogs, they watch atheist YouTube videos, and they collect atheist arguments and counterarguments from such sources. They comment on any online news story that relates in any way to faith or religion to express their views against religion. You could say that their “religion” is an aggressive non-religion. In their private lives, they often tend to live a prim and rather respectable lifestyle more often than not and are often good parents and partners. Their opposition to the religious is usually based around emotional issues that relate to philosophical issues, such as the the problem of suffering and what they see as irreconcilable differences between biblical literalism and what they see as “science.” (If you ever hear someone refer to the supposed Euthyphro Dilemma as if you had never heard of it before, you are dealing with a High Church atheist.) They have usually received a fair to good education, often had a religious background which they jettisoned in late childhood to early adolescence, and tend to be a little nerdy. They are the ones you tend to see post most commonly.

Other atheists are “Low Church” atheists. They don’t do any of the above and would be hard-pressed to come up with a cogent argument against faith. They have no real interest in atheism qua atheism and don’t follow atheist media, they just don’t have religious beliefs and were either raised without a religion, received an indifferent generalized religion from their parents which they jettisoned in adolescence, or dropped religious faith because it opposed various lifestyle choices they want to be able to do, such as out-of-wedlock sex, homosexuality, and abortion, as well as a relativistic view of morality. (If you ever hear someone argue that Jesus said you can’t judge anyone for anything, you are dealing with a Low Church atheist.) They tend to have received an indifferent education. They aren’t really interested in arguing about religion, and probably just see it as something that is not relevant to their lifestyle - at most, they may enjoy making tasteless jokes about religious suspects, and have some beliefs that the Church executed Galileo and that the Crusades were somehow unprovoked. Their opposition to the religious is often based around emotional issues that relate to interpersonal and sexual issues, such as the supposed hypocrisy of churchgoers and the clergy, priestly celibacy, female ordination, or the abuse crisis. They rarely post about such issues on-line, but many of the atheists you meet in your day-to-day “real” life are in this group.

By using these stereotypes I’m of course painting atheists with a broad bush, and you could probably consider these as the two opposite poles of the atheist spectrum, with some in the middle and others tending towards either pole. Could be a useful way to understand the atheist phenomenon if you’re approaching someone with an evangelistic purpose, as you would need to slant your arguments to appeal to a specific type.
Click to expand...
 
mafh said:
I think this is a pretty good distinction. I call the “High Church” atheists “militant atheists”. The others you describe are either people who are completely indifferent to religion (I think this is the fastest growing group), or are rebelling against Christianity in particular. (Note that there are plenty of non-Catholic Christian denominations who are ok with homosexuality, abortion, etc. so I don’t think this by itself would lead someone to choose atheism.)

I don’t feel like I fit in very well into the ‘High Church’/‘Low Church’ model though. I would describe myself as a materialist/metaphysical naturalist, but I value many of the cultural, ideological, artistic, ethical and other contributions made to society by certain religious institutions, like the Catholic Church. Also, I have no interest in atheist blogs, websites, books, etc.
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I’d agree that you probably couldn’t be described as a “High Church Atheist” or a “Low Church Atheist.” The correct description for you is probably “Future Convert.” 😉

Just messin’ with you. Or maybe not.
 
Gordon_Sims said:
A lot of the atheists I know are of the spittle-spewing, hate-filled, belligerent type.

The ones I know personally who hold themselves to be calm, relaxed and open-minded are only calm, relaxed and open-minded when you’re agreeing with them…
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Couldn’t agree more or when they’re alone because I find that with the modern, aggressive and unquestioning atheist that the pack instinct is strong.
I know that there are atheists who are calm and accepting of other people’s views but from my experience, they’re in a minority
 
Yeah, well, some people aren’t nice people whether they’re atheist, Christian, Muslim, Scientologist, Jedi or whatever. They also tend to make everyone else who shares their identity look bad, so oh dear. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a very aggressive atheist. But maybe I am. I guess if I was I wouldn’t consider myself to be. Really, though, my opinion on the existence of God has changed considerably as of late, and I’m probably more of an agnostic more than anything. I don’t know. You guys confused me, and I don’t know what I am anymore.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
Yeah, well, some people aren’t nice people whether they’re atheist, Christian, Muslim, Scientologist, Jedi or whatever. They also tend to make everyone else who shares their identity look bad, so oh dear. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a very aggressive atheist. But maybe I am. I guess if I was I wouldn’t consider myself to be. Really, though, my opinion on the existence of God has changed considerably as of late, and I’m probably more of an agnostic more than anything. I don’t know. You guys confused me, and I don’t know what I am anymore.
Click to expand...
Well, I’m glad you’re here. I get a chuckle out of that photo you post every time I see it, at least
 
Their bark is worse than their bite. Atheism does not offer any solutions to life’s problems and it doesn’t present a coherent, consistent worldview. It sure is flashy though and it appeals to the kind of people who feel let down by their religious upbringing and want to establish some kind of dominance over other people. Outspoken atheists do say a lot of things that offend me, but that’s no reason for me to shout back at them (because, really, that’s what they want. They want a reaction out of you).

We can shout back and forth, but, as a muslim, I want to aspire to something greater than that. Atheists need an example of enlightenment and grace and forgiveness, but that’s not going to come by trying to douse hatred with more hatred. In one of my favorite Qur’anic passages, it says “Nor can goodness and Evil be equal. Repel (Evil) with what is better: Then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate! And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint…” (surah 41:34-35)
 
There are many non-committed atheists, but they’re not the sort of people that like to discuss religion on internet forums. 🤷
 
I’m not Atheist because I have anything against religious people.

I’m Atheist because I never even knew what religion was until I was around fourteen years old.

The anger and frustration about the issue never came from me but rather, from the theists, mostly Christian. In fact, I got punched in the face when I found out what Christianity was. Then afterward, I remember asking my parents why this happened and they explained that many people were just afraid of what’s different. There are people who believe in a faith that are not, however. I myself grew afraid of Christians all throughout middle school because I was always afraid of how they would react when they found out I knew nothing about what they believed in. Justly so, I was right to be afraid; growing up in the Bible belt for a while, I got into a lot of physical fights just to defend myself in school once word spread.

It got so bad, I had to change schools.

Once I moved out of the Bible belt, things were better and it wasn’t a big problem. But taking an omni-view of all of this, I can understand how many good Christians can take a look at another Atheist and wonder why they’re saying such bad things,and on the flip side, I can certainly say that there was a time in the past where I was very afraid of Christianity — not because of what I was taught by my parents, but rather, the behavior I have experienced from Christian children.

And I can understand how, if other children who were never taught a religion growing up, experienced what I had experienced, they would become very militant Atheists indeed.

Luckily for me, I managed to find a group of Christian friends who were very kind and friendly and my views on “ALL” Christians changed a little. They changed to “majority”, and later, “some”… And I don’t know if my views on Christians being mean changed due to the maturity level over the years, or if it is totally attributed to my mindset being more open and accepting after the violent experiences passed in time.

As an adult, it’s rare to find any disagreement escalate to violence so that helped a lot, and luckily, I didn’t turn out to be a total militant atheist. But I had support. The support came from other Atheists, and even other Christians who understood what I had went through. Everything turned out just fine.
 
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