About the Friday Freethought Perennials in general: This subset of my blog is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty—and that is where footnotes and careful citations of sources can be found. It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.
Do Atheists Hate God? Aren’t They Really Just in Rebellion Against His Authority?
No.
Many political or philosophical questions come with enough possibly different interpretations that answers must be carefully qualified in some way. These two questions aren’t among those.
By straightforward definition, atheists do not—cannot—hate God or Yahweh or Allah or any other “God” or god or be “in rebellion” against any god. Atheist means “one who does not believe in any god(s), who does not think ‘God’ exists.” It really doesn’t mean anything else. Barring the insanity of saying one is an “atheist” and thinking there is nevertheless somehow a god to hate or rebel against, it is nonsensical to even ask if atheists hate “God” or refuse, like a hormone-driven teenager, to buckle under to “Him.”
This does not prove that atheists are right or that atheists cannot be unreasonable or hateful in many ways or toward many other things or people.
I know some atheists—a few of my fellow atheists—who seem to hate believers in God or followers of one religion or of all of them. I don’t think such ill-focused hatred makes any sense or is a good idea at all. But it isn’t, whatever else it is, hating god.
I know some atheists—a very few of my fellow atheists—who seem to hate the very idea or possibility of a supernatural power. I don’t honestly think that makes sense at all, either. If I thought a supernatural power was supported by any evidence or reasonable, persuasive logic, I’d accept it, not hate it.
I know some atheists—many of my fellow atheists—who seem to hate religion or at least some versions of religion, for what they (we) perceive as the dangerous and destructive effects these systems of supernatural belief can have on people. In a limited way, I can be said to be in this group of atheists myself. In my long life, I’ve observed hundreds of theistic believers closely and thousands more believers more superficially. Like non-theistic people, they vary tremendously, with kindness, honesty, intelligence, and decency mixed in with the opposite qualities within some individuals and among different people.
And I’d add, I vigorously disagree with some tenets of many religions—but it makes no sense to “hate” bad ideas. Work and debate against them?—of course.
Sometimes, with some religious believers, I think there is evidence that religion can seriously impair decency, undermine a sense of responsibility, overthrow truthfulness, weaken tolerance, and shred acceptance of complexity—in social or physical reality. Rigid commitments to ideologies unrelated to religion or God(s) can also have these negative effects, but my perception—subjective, of course—is that religious belief is somewhat more likely to do this and to do so more intensely.
Let’s think a bit more about rebellion. Can someone be “in rebellion” against the alleged Ultimate Authority? Possibly, though it sure seems as if it’d be deeply unwise—an all-powerful, all-knowing entity, if it exists, could sure make one pay dearly—but only a believer in any god could so rebel. Remember, we atheists do not—by definition—have any possibility of any relationship, good or bad, with a divine being.
The first order of business for “God” if “He” wants to bring us atheists to heel or to get us to love “Him,” obey “Him,” or do good things “In His Service”? Or to accept the leadership of others in “His” name—or to support those leaders financially?
Persuade us there is some sort of supernatural being at all.
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Spot on.
It’s curious how often Christians and other theists can’t imagine why anyone would seriously doubt God’s existence. Doesn’t everyone (at least everyone God gave a soul) just know in their heart that God exists?
So if you become an atheist it must be for a nefarious reason. You must hate God. (Some Christians believe atheists are people who grew up hating their father and then transferred that to hatred of The Father.)
Another nefarious reason behind atheism was proposed by Billy Graham who wrote, “Many atheists I find, reject God for one reason: They want to run their own lives.”
He also said “Taken to its conclusion, atheism ends in despair.”
I wrote an article about it here -
https://atheology.com/2011/06/15/billy-graham-on-atheism/
and, like you, suggested that atheism is just a conclusion about God’s existence.
As for the cliffs of despair, I couldn’t find them.
Ha Ha! Gotta love the depiction of God as an old white man. Jesus is typically Caucasian also. I thought the ultimate absurdity was Max von Sydow--a Swede--playing Jesus in the 1965 film The Greatest Story Ever Told. Even the Holy Ghost is represented as a--white--dove.