Dealing with Atheist Anger

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Padres1969

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So I was curious how folks on CA have dealt with atheists they’ve come across over the years that don’t just reject religion, but atheists who are downright hostile towards it.

I was compelled to write this article after an incident last night with a long time friend who happens to be atheist. Usually he’s a very affable and congenial Canadian (and he’s as close to those Canadian nice guy stereotypes as I’ve seen in real life). But something about religion sets him off.

We’ve been holding a night where we get together and watch a TV series or movie as close to weekly as we can for many years. Currently one of those shows is a short lived series (I think it was on Fox) that in one episode featured a Catholic nun who had lost her faith and run away from a convent and the priest who was sent after her to try and convince her to come back. Suffice it to say the episode’s basic premise was that the nun’s faith is regained when she sees what she thinks is a miracle. In the process of following the wayward nun the priest encounters a former girlfriend from before he turned to Christ and the child he never knew he had and they are reunited all because the nun ran away. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, except my friend whose first response after the credits was, “I didn’t care for that at all, too much religion in it.” And mind you this was a comedic episode of a largely comedic show. It featured several situations a Catholic might actually consider a tad insulting with the wayward nun attempting to exorcise another character who hears voices with a kitchen knife, the priest using a bathroom stall as a de-facto confessional (while also using said bathroom), etc… All done for comedic effect of course. And my friend’s sole takeaway, was that it was bad because it featured two religious characters.

Now this was not the first time I’ve noticed this proclivity from him to be extremely put out by religion. Nor is he the only person I know who has similar proclivities. My aunt is another one who puts down religion in her own passive aggressive way in person or on social media any chance she gets. And an increasing number of people I come across have similar reactions. Religion, and Judeo-Christian Religion in particular, seems to simply anger them by it’s very existence. And many of them were ironically raised in some religion, almost universally it was Christian.

At long last we get to my basic question for this thread. How do you deal with that kind of response? Obviously not interacting with them at all is not possible, as in many cases these are lifelong friends, or family. And obviously avoiding the topic works well in the majority of situations. But sometimes it just can’t be avoided. 🤷 So what is one to do? :confused:
 
I look forward to seeing the replies to this.
I too find myself dealing with hostility of those who don’t believe as I do.
Not sure how to be charitable without compromising my principles.
 
I’m not an Atheist anymore, but as being non religous I can try and give meaningful comments to this discussion. I have had many debates and am not seeking one with these comments, just putting out info.
  1. Many Catholics on this site use broad statements of Atheists. “They are without hope” All Atheists are condenmed to hell" Atheists are bad people" etc, This causes them to get extremely defensive about their beliefs and fight back understandly.
  2. In my personal belief atheism isnt a choice. Tommorow you couldnt wake up and no believe in God. When I was an Atheist I wanted to believe in God so badly, I went to church, participated in my ministry, volunteered, but deep down I could not believe. This was immensely frustrating
  3. Especially in evangelical churches children with different beliefs are often alienated and looked down upon. Often Athiests have had extremely negative experiences with religion when they were young.
Let me know if you have any questions
 
Padres1969 said:
So I was curious how folks on CA have dealt with atheists they’ve come across over the years that don’t just reject religion, but atheists who are downright hostile towards it.

I was compelled to write this article after an incident last night with a long time friend who happens to be atheist. Usually he’s a very affable and congenial Canadian (and he’s as close to those Canadian nice guy stereotypes as I’ve seen in real life). But something about religion sets him off.

We’ve been holding a night where we get together and watch a TV series or movie as close to weekly as we can for many years. Currently one of those shows is a short lived series (I think it was on Fox) that in one episode featured a Catholic nun who had lost her faith and run away from a convent and the priest who was sent after her to try and convince her to come back. Suffice it to say the episode’s basic premise was that the nun’s faith is regained when she sees what she thinks is a miracle. In the process of following the wayward nun the priest encounters a former girlfriend from before he turned to Christ and the child he never knew he had and they are reunited all because the nun ran away. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, except my friend whose first response after the credits was, “I didn’t care for that at all, too much religion in it.” And mind you this was a comedic episode of a largely comedic show. It featured several situations a Catholic might actually consider a tad insulting with the wayward nun attempting to exorcise another character who hears voices with a kitchen knife, the priest using a bathroom stall as a de-facto confessional (while also using said bathroom), etc… All done for comedic effect of course. And my friend’s sole takeaway, was that it was bad because it featured two religious characters.

Now this was not the first time I’ve noticed this proclivity from him to be extremely put out by religion. Nor is he the only person I know who has similar proclivities. My aunt is another one who puts down religion in her own passive aggressive way in person or on social media any chance she gets. And an increasing number of people I come across have similar reactions. Religion, and Judeo-Christian Religion in particular, seems to simply anger them by it’s very existence. And many of them were ironically raised in some religion, almost universally it was Christian.

At long last we get to my basic question for this thread. How do you deal with that kind of response? Obviously not interacting with them at all is not possible, as in many cases these are lifelong friends, or family. And obviously avoiding the topic works well in the majority of situations. But sometimes it just can’t be avoided. 🤷 So what is one to do? :confused:
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Former atheist here and my immediate family are atheists.

Finding too much religion in public areas or popular media isn’t always an expression of anger.

Public expression on social media is IMO one of two things going on, or both. Others who are religious have been expressive of their religious views and so other religious view are expressed. Not just from atheists.

Some atheists, mind you in my experience it is not a majority, actively proselytize religious believers in an attempt to convert people to atheism.

Either way, on social media such as FB I just let it go. Everyone else views the zealous about religion, including the zealous atheist, as kind of annoying. Don’t be one of the annoying zealots by responding.

In face to face comments, like watching a tv show you can find common ground. Such as, commenting that you didn’t really like the religious portrayal either, because it wasn’t realistic.

An example from our household, there is the understanding that fictional portrayals in tv and movies are loosely based on facts. So if a comment comes up, such as those religious portrayals are super annoying, I’ll just say something like, it’s loosely based on what people actually believe or practice.
 
I’ve found that there are two types of atheists.

One is just the non-believer. They don’t believe, but they don’t have a problem with other people believing. Live and let live.

The other is the anti-theist who not only doesn’t believe but they are hostile towards those who do believe do everything from make snarky comments to taking issues to court to fight the rights of believers (such as the battles over crosses or 10 Commandments on public grounds).

I am friends with several atheists.

I actively avoid anti-theists. I find them to be angry and unpleasant to be around.

If this fellow is relatively pleasant except when confronted with religious toned themes, then perhaps it would just be best to avoid having anything religious brought up around him. But if he goes out of his way to bash your faith, then I’d probably unfriend him. I had a friend that was an atheist wiccan that began to actively bash Christians and especially Catholics and ultimately I chose to end the friendship. My take on it is that she knew I was a Catholic Christian, and if she saw nothing wrong with mocking my beliefs then probably she didn’t respect me enough to be my friend anyway.
 
JewishCatholic said:
I’m not an Atheist anymore, but as being non religous I can try and give meaningful comments to this discussion. I have had many debates and am not seeking one with these comments, just putting out info.
  1. Many Catholics on this site use broad statements of Atheists. “They are without hope” All Atheists are condenmed to hell" Atheists are bad people" etc, This causes them to get extremely defensive about their beliefs and fight back understandly.
  2. In my personal belief atheism isnt a choice. Tommorow you couldnt wake up and no believe in God. When I was an Atheist I wanted to believe in God so badly, I went to church, participated in my ministry, volunteered, but deep down I could not believe. This was immensely frustrating
  3. Especially in evangelical churches children with different beliefs are often alienated and looked down upon. Often Athiests have had extremely negative experiences with religion when they were young.
Let me know if you have any questions
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  1. On this site I agree it might be hard for an atheist to not get defensive from time to time. But in the context of the real world I often see the angry reaction to religion with absolutely no prompting at all, such as last night. I mean it’s not like the episode was overtly religious or pushing a viewer toward religion. It was simply a part, a minor part, of the episode. And yet it’s very existence proved too much.
  2. For an atheist who doesn’t want to be an atheist I can definitely see how this can be frustrating and cause consternation when confronted with those that do believe. But to my knowledge this particular individual doesn’t fit that mold, nor do many other atheists. They don’t want to believe. Rather they would rather no one else believe along with them. Now maybe there’s an underlying current of what you say that causes them to want others to drop their beliefs to join them, but in this particular case if there is I’ve never seen it in almost 10 years of friendship. Which begs the question, how do you sus out if that’s the underlying cause, assuming it is, and how do you deal with it?
  3. This definitely seems possible. A couple of atheists/a-religious I know would fit this mold. But I also find that these folks seem to lump all religions, particularly Christian religions, into a highly specialized and skewed box. As if anyone who believes is a fundamentalist evangelical that is out to tell everyone else how to live their lives and that they have to believe. When reality for me personally couldn’t be further from the truth as an Episcopalian (let’s just say that if the “Great Commission” had be left up to me Christianity wouldn’t have left Jerusalem). This one seems a little more straight forward to address, ie at least for me to show them that not all religions are like that, but even that isn’t an easy subject to broach. I mean I found it hard enough to expose my a-religious, but definitely not anti-religioius, wife who had some of those same type of preconceptions that her preconceptions weren’t accurate.
 
JewishCatholic said:
  1. In my personal belief atheism isnt a choice. Tommorow you couldnt wake up and no believe in God. When I was an Atheist I wanted to believe in God so badly, I went to church, participated in my ministry, volunteered, but deep down I could not believe. This was immensely frustrating
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I don’t have much to add to the topic; I just wanted to say that I’m happy your earnest desire was finally fulfilled.
 
Padres1969 said:
  1. On this site I agree it might be hard for an atheist to not get defensive from time to time. But in the context of the real world I often see the angry reaction to religion with absolutely no prompting at all, such as last night. I mean it’s not like the episode was overtly religious or pushing a viewer toward religion. It was simply a part, a minor part, of the episode. And yet it’s very existence proved too much.
  2. For an atheist who doesn’t want to be an atheist I can definitely see how this can be frustrating and cause consternation when confronted with those that do believe. But to my knowledge this particular individual doesn’t fit that mold, nor do many other atheists. They don’t want to believe. Rather they would rather no one else believe along with them. Now maybe there’s an underlying current of what you say that causes them to want others to drop their beliefs to join them, but in this particular case if there is I’ve never seen it in almost 10 years of friendship. Which begs the question, how do you sus out if that’s the underlying cause, assuming it is, and how do you deal with it?
  3. This definitely seems possible. A couple of atheists/a-religious I know would fit this mold. But I also find that these folks seem to lump all religions, particularly Christian religions, into a highly specialized and skewed box. As if anyone who believes is a fundamentalist evangelical that is out to tell everyone else how to live their lives and that they have to believe. When reality for me personally couldn’t be further from the truth as an Episcopalian (let’s just say that if the “Great Commission” had be left up to me Christianity wouldn’t have left Jerusalem). This one seems a little more straight forward to address, ie at least for me to show them that not all religions are like that, but even that isn’t an easy subject to broach. I mean I found it hard enough to expose my a-religious, but definitely not anti-religioius, wife who had some of those same type of preconceptions that her preconceptions weren’t accurate.
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Yea I’m not 100% sure why some are so hostile, but i suppose their are some in every group. When people disagree on such a fundamental issue, passionate debates are going to happen and I guess we will just have to agree to disagree with them.
 
In this instance, I would probably just shrug my shoulders and say something along the lines of, “There are all kinds of people in the world and many of them believe in a religion. It’s pretty hard as well as dishonest to try and artistically portray a world where religion doesn’t exist.”
 
AKDee said:
I’ve found that there are two types of atheists.

One is just the non-believer. They don’t believe, but they don’t have a problem with other people believing. Live and let live.

The other is the anti-theist who not only doesn’t believe but they are hostile towards those who do believe do everything from make snarky comments to taking issues to court to fight the rights of believers (such as the battles over crosses or 10 Commandments on public grounds).

I am friends with several atheists.

I actively avoid anti-theists. I find them to be angry and unpleasant to be around.

If this fellow is relatively pleasant except when confronted with religious toned themes, then perhaps it would just be best to avoid having anything religious brought up around him. But if he goes out of his way to bash your faith, then I’d probably unfriend him. I had a friend that was an atheist wiccan that began to actively bash Christians and especially Catholics and ultimately I chose to end the friendship. My take on it is that she knew I was a Catholic Christian, and if she saw nothing wrong with mocking my beliefs then probably she didn’t respect me enough to be my friend anyway.
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I definitely agree that there are two types. The anti-theists as you call them are really the ones I’m dealing with. The Live and Let Live types are my kind of people in that regard as that’s how I am in most things, even religion (probably why I like coming on CA despite my obvious disagreements with the RCC).

And you’re right, most of the time simply avoiding the subject is the easiest way to avoid engaging the “anti-theist” mode. But as can occur from time to time it’s simply unavoidable. And I doubt it is done to poke at my Christianity purposely. I suspect he doesn’t even realize I am an active church going believing Christian. I don’t tend to advertise it for that exact reason that it’s a religious subject and not likely to go anywhere good. And this same person has a somewhat agnostic girlfriend who was raised Catholic and isn’t a non-believer (more a lost one), so I highly doubt he’s doing it to be offensive. Being offensive intentionally would offend his Canadian sensibilities I suspect.
 
JewishCatholic said:
Yea I’m not 100% sure why some are so hostile, but i suppose their are some in every group. When people disagree on such a fundamental issue, passionate debates are going to happen and I guess we will just have to agree to disagree with them.
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That or if it wouldn’t destroy friendships, point out that they’re being somewhat hypocritical. If they paint all religious, or all Christians, with a fundamentalist brush where they’re trying to assert their religious views on the whole world, and push for all people to “throw off” religion… how are they being any different? Pushing non-religion in a manner that mirrors those who push their religion hard on to others IMO is simply two sides of the same coin.
 
I have encountered militant atheists who are totally against religion on the online game NationStates. The site contains a forum to discuss a variety of topics. Most people on that site are atheist or agnostic. I often vigorously attacked their views. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I tend to be relentless. It got me into trouble on that site and now I am banned permanently. The moderators tend to ban Christian conservatives for speaking their mind in the swarm of irreligious people. This is an example of atheist contempt for Christianity.
 
Ugh, angry atheists are so mean!

I have only met 2 angry atheists in person - a married couple (the guy works with my husband). They were polite and friendly and we hung out a few times when they first moved here. It wasn’t until we became facebook friends with them that we realized how hostile they were. They were always posting very anti Christian stuff on their profiles. Ugly, nasty things about Christians, rash generalizations, and strawmen.

My husband doesn’t use facebook too much, but I do. And while I never commented on any of their provocative posts, I would occasionally post something Catholic or prolife on my own page. Nothing incriminating at all. Just mild stuff… usually a beautiful quote from Pope Francis, or a comment about the sanctity of all human life, born and unborn, etc. It wasn’t long until they both unfriended me on facebook (assuming because they didn’t like my Christian posts) and after that they never hung out with us again.

Also, I am on an atheist forum, and there are quite a few angry atheists there too. Some people there are super awesome and I like them a lot and consider them friends, but plenty others are just super hostile. It is hard to deal with, because they’d get sooo angry at me merely for having the personal opinions and beliefs that I do… of which I never tried to shove down their throats or anything. They’re just… hateful!
 
It has been my experience that some atheists are hostile because they view religion much as others might view a strong belief in superstition. If you had watched an episode in which the show had concluded with providing a real and credible reason to continue to believe in avoiding black cats you might equally be somewhat put out if you looked up only to see some nodding approval from among the audience.

Anger often also has at its root an element of hurt and/or frustration. To concede that the majority of the world does not see reality as you do can be a frustrating proposition…to be reminded that one once devoted a great deal of time, resources, and energy to that in which they no longer believe can also lead to feelings of having been mislead, which can run into some fairly hurt feelings.

I would simply suggest if there are any future such confrontations to simply validate the atheist with a few words of sincere understanding: “I suppose that must have been a bit difficult for you to sit through…thank you for watching it with me anyway…I enjoy your company…”

What the atheist must eventually realize, hopefully on his own, is that if he truly lives in a world in which his set of beliefs are nowhere near universal he should be ever open to the possibility that he might simply be wrong…
 
JewishCatholic said:
  1. Many Catholics on this site use broad statements of Atheists. “They are without hope” All Atheists are condenmed to hell" Atheists are bad people" etc, This causes them to get extremely defensive about their beliefs and fight back understandly.
Click to expand...
This is true, and I disagree with any of these notions and will speak out against them every time. However, I don’t think this can be used as an “excuse” or “reason” as to why angry atheists are the way they are (I use the term angry atheists to refer specifically to the hostile ones. I know not all atheists are like this). The things they say about Christians in their atheist forum is MUCH worse and MUCH more frequent than anything I’ve seen Catholics say about atheists here. And they are about a million times meaner to theists on their forum than we are to atheists on this forum. Some of them would be very mean to me when I was nothing but kind and respectful to them. They’d ask me questions about my faith and then get really mad at me for my answer. I was compared to the Ku Klux Klan, told I’m a horrible person, and much worse things were said to me there that I can’t even write here because it would be against the rules.
 
Jelrak_TB said:
It has been my experience that some atheists are hostile because they view religion much as others might view a strong belief in superstition. If you had watched an episode in which the show had concluded with providing a real and credible reason to continue to believe in avoiding black cats you might equally be somewhat put out if you looked up only to see some nodding approval from among the audience.

Anger often also has at its root an element of hurt and/or frustration. To concede that the majority of the world does not see reality as you do can be a frustrating proposition…to be reminded that one once devoted a great deal of time, resources, and energy to that in which they no longer believe can also lead to feelings of having been mislead, which can run into some fairly hurt feelings.

I would simply suggest if there are any future such confrontations to simply validate the atheist with a few words of sincere understanding: “I suppose that must have been a bit difficult for you to sit through…thank you for watching it with me anyway…I enjoy your company…”

What the atheist must eventually realize, hopefully on his own, is that if he truly lives in a world in which his set of beliefs are nowhere near universal he should be ever open to the possibility that he might simply be wrong…
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Very insightful approach. I guess the idea of being monolithic in belief, or in an atheist’s case lack of belief and seeing it as an us against them, is something I’ve never been very good at. It’s one of the reasons I’ve made such a good Episcopalian I suspect (if I do say so myself). Live and let live could be an Anglican motto.
 
A lot of atheists are angry at God, and seemingly, by extension, at those who drop His name. There’s no real way around it.

ICXC NIKA
 
Okay so just to put my two cents in on this I believe there are different types of atheists as well normally when I talk to atheists I use philosophy, voting Bible verses on an atheist isn’t going to get them to believe because they don’t believe in the Bible you have to start with philosophy and work your way up. Now that being said there are the atheists that really don’t care whether or not people are religious and some of which can even see the good in religion unfortunately I feel like those are getting to be fewer and fewer. But then you have the virulent atheists that are very common on websites like YouTube. These are the ones that make the ridiculous claim that Christians worship a sky fairy or a bearded old man in the sky things that you know Christians actually don’t do. These types of atheists bother me not necessarily so much because of their content for religion obviously they don’t believe in religion that’s why they’re anything but the fact they try to proselytize people into becoming atheist which I don’t understand why is a Christian have a command from the Bible to preach the gospel into all the world. (Mark 16:15). I don’t think atheists have a similar command. Would actually really bothers me about the so-called new atheist is that they actually take people like Richard Dawkins seriously and from what I’ve heard from Dawkins t’s quite clear that he does not know as much about Christianity as he claims. Of course you have people like Sam Harris who claimed that he started writing his book The End of Faith or something like that the day after September 11th because somehow he magically knew something we all didn’t that September 11th attacks were caused by Islamic terrorists which if you recall correctly we were not even aware of until a few weeks afterwards. You know my advice with atheists especially the Richard Dawkins type atheist if we need to be more aggressive with what we believe and we need to be better grounded in philosophy we need to make sure that people know that not every Christian is a fundamentalist Protestant. I think the problem is that many people believe all the world’s problems can be solved with science let me tell you something in the eighteen-fifties in America science proved that black people were inferior to white people this is why I will never say something like science proves I will say science indicates in some situations but never science proves. Or this complete rubbish beliefs that somehow religion causes War well there have certainly been wars fought over religion but let me ask you a question? Wouldn’t we just find another reason to have more? And besides that most wars have not been over religion. I can appreciate the intellectually honest atheist The Atheist that says I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no God I’m not going to force this belief on you and I’m not going to ridicule you for your beliefs I can appreciate the atheist that holds that viewpoint. What I have a problem with is this militant scientism that according to Jennifer Fulwiler if you know who she is is running rampant in our society
 
Padres1969 said:
That or if it wouldn’t destroy friendships, point out that they’re being somewhat hypocritical. If they paint all religious, or all Christians, with a fundamentalist brush where they’re trying to assert their religious views on the whole world, and push for all people to “throw off” religion… how are they being any different? Pushing non-religion in a manner that mirrors those who push their religion hard on to others IMO is simply two sides of the same coin.
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Yes, I have seen a lot of this hypocrisy.
 
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