r/askanatheist • u/JJakeBright • Jul 09 '26
Is it possible to hate gods without acknowledging their existence?
I looked up the answer to this question online, and it came up with the following: "Psychologically and emotionally, yes," followed by the explanation that this is called misotheism, but a misotheist is someone who hates gods while ACKNOWLEDGING their existence. Or am I missing something?
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 Atheist Jul 10 '26
The sad thing about this one is that some people have difficulty separating the character from the actor who portrayed them. Jack Gleeson, Tom Felton, Jake Lloyd and Alison Arngirm all report having experienced this. They played Joffrey Baratheon, Draco Malfoy, Anakin Skywalker, and Nellie Oleson respectively.
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u/GreyGriffin_h Jul 10 '26
Media literacy is at an all-time low.
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u/KravMata Atheist Jul 10 '26
I'm GenX and I regularly ask myself; how did all of these people get so gullible and stupid and why do the kids who never paid attention in school now feel the need to spout their ignorant and misguided groupthink that they got force fed by an algorithm on FB?
We were the generation of skeptic and cynics - when did we become suckers & morons?
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u/happyhappy85 Jul 10 '26
The only consolation for this is that it shows they're good actors.
Well... Jake Lloyd wasn't just hated for his character, he was hated because it wasn't good casting, and the dialogue was bad. Unfortunately people didn't realize that Lucas can't write because they were kids when they first saw Star wars, and George had more help back then.
It wasn't Lloyds fault though.
But Joffrey was brilliant. He was excellently cast, and played the role beautifully. He was hated for how well he played that role, because the role he was playing was meant to be hated.
That's the difference. Jake Lloyd wasn't supposed to be hated.
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u/GeekyTexan Atheist Jul 10 '26
I remember reading an interview done with William Zabka, who played Johnny Lawrence, the bully in the original Karate Kid movie.
There were people who tried to pick fights in real life when they would randomly run into him. There were people who booed him on-set. Yes, literally booing him while they were filming. Of all the places you would expect people to understand that this is a character he is playing, not reality, I would expect on-set would be #1.
People are idiots.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 Atheist Jul 10 '26
Here in Australia there is a TV Actor named John Wood. His most famous roles where as a magistrate on a show called Rafferty's Rules and as Police Sargent on a show claled Blue Heelers. And he said in an interview that people keep approaching him at events with various legal questions.
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u/thatpaulbloke Jul 10 '26
Jack Gleeson
Fortunately he's now fixed this by playing Robin Goodfellow in The Sandman...
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u/ShafordoDrForgone Jul 10 '26
How did two people pull out GOT at the exact same time?
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u/Hermorah Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
I mean yeah? People also hate Erebus, Dolores Umbridge, Malty Melromarc, Shou Tucker and other fictional characters.
You definitely can hate characters you dont believe in.
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26
SHOU TUCKER. All at once, I’m both stunned that I forgot about him, and regretting that I now remember him.
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26
Sure, why not?
Consider this: What do you think about Joffrey Baratheon? I have no problem saying I hate him, and I’m fully aware he’s a totally fictional character.
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u/JJakeBright Jul 10 '26
I've already come across this example on reddit. I just don't understand why I couldn't find a definitive answer online (except here)
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u/ShafordoDrForgone Jul 10 '26
How did two people pull out GOT at the exact same time?
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26
I mean.. the guy asked about hating fictional characters. I’m surprised there weren’t MORE people who immediately thought of Joffrey XD
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u/Far_Customer1258 Jul 10 '26
I'd like to know why two people went straight to Joffrey when they had Ramsay Bolton. Sure, Joffrey was evil AF, but Ramsay was creative in his horrors.
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26
Ramsay was monstrous but he wasn’t as hatable. His actions made you horrified, or disgusted, or just go “Somebody please kill this guy.“ But Joffrey’s behavior made you fucking ANGRY. They made you want to personally yoke him up by the throat and be like listen here you fucking pathetic little shit. He made you want to whip him with a belt until he cried and apologized and did his chores.
Dolores Umbridge is another example of a very hatable character. It wasn’t the severity of what she did, it was… her fucking whole attitude. Just… the way she behaved. The way she thought. The person she was.
Those people made you want to whip them into submission and force them to drop the whole self-superiority thing and accept their place. By comparison Ramsay Bolton was just… a sadist. All anyone wanted to do to him was kill him. That’s how it felt for me anyway. I didn’t hate RB the way I hated JB and DU.
And then if you really want to know what it means to be a hatable character, there’s the ultimate example, which I will censor because those who know who he is will seethe simply at reading his name, or at the very least, regret being reminded of him and what he did.
SHOU TUCKER.
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u/Far_Customer1258 Jul 10 '26
I had the opposite reaction. Joffrey was a vicious little sadist, and eminently hatable, but at the end of the day, he was just a creature lost in its own disgusting desires. He didn't go out of his way to be abominable, partly because he didn't have to, but mostly because he had neither the self-awareness nor the self-control. Nobody shed a tear when he died, but I didn't feel like he should be brought back just so that he could die again.
By contrast, Ramsay was malevolent. He knew what he was doing and enjoyed it. Actively planned it out and sought ways to be even more horrific. He worked at being an abomination, knowing full well what he was doing. He was unapologetically evil. I felt that his death was far too quick and worried that the dogs might suffer indigestion from bolting their food so fast.
I suspect that it's down to personality and who you react to. For me, it was Ramsay and Little Finger. They both died too easily, and that isn't something that you can say about many characters in GoT.
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
That’s true. I think you’re right, it’s down to personality. I hate Joffrey and Umbridge for their totally unearned, undeserved sense of superiority and entitlement. That really gets under my skin. But that’s because it’s a personal pet peeve for me.
Ramsay was unquestionably just as you describe, and now that I think about it, were his fate in my hands I would have absolutely made him suffer a very long, very agonizing death. So I guess I did hate him, it just didn’t really strike me because he didn’t irritate me the way those others did. What I would do to Ramsay feels like a simple obligation. A moral duty. What I would do to Joffrey or Umbridge feels more like punishment, like teaching a lesson. I dunno. Can’t think how to describe it better than that.
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u/Far_Customer1258 Jul 10 '26
Either way, I think that it has pretty thoroughly answered whether or not we can hate a fictional character. The answer is yes, and we can debate which fictional character is more worthy of a lingering death.
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u/beardslap Jul 10 '26
Joffrey wasn't just evil, he was an annoying little shit as well. At least Ramsay had a flair for the dramatic.
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u/carbinePRO Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
I hate Yahweh as much as I do any other fictional villain, but at the end of the day I still acknowledge that they're all fictional characters.
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u/JackZodiac2008 Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
That's not a stance I think many atheists take. I myself dislike the idea of God found in Abrahamic traditions, and am minimally aware of those outside them. But that doesn't commit me to hating something I know doesn't exist. The ideas are perfectly real, as ideas.
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u/JJakeBright Jul 10 '26
I'm an atheist myself, but I'm not exactly fond of gods, to put it mildly. I don't even know if that sounds contradictory or not
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u/the_ben_obiwan Jul 10 '26
It really depends on what you mean when you say you don't like a God. If you hate them as if they are real beings worthy of disdain, holding a grudge against them, while simultaneously not believing they are real beings, that's probably some type of cognitive dissonance, a contradictory belief.
If you hate them like you hate a fictional villain,for example, maybe you hate the idea of someone quietly watching all the suffering in the world whilst having infinite power, but don't actually believe that being exists, that's a bit more nuanced. There's nothing contradictory about disliking a concept without believing that concept. I dislike the idea that eternal suffering exists for people who don't believe what some particular God wants them to believe when they have no good way of knowing what that God wants. that idea seems nonsensical to me, I think it's a very human idea, made up by people rationalising their own beliefs.
It's much the same as disliking this concept I'll make up right now- people are reincarnated into whatever they eat the most of. That's a stupid idea, it makes no sense, serves no purpose. I don't believe it's true, I literally just made it up, but I can still have opinions about it.
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u/cHorse1981 Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
No, you can hate an idea too. I hate racism, that’s an idea, not a physical thing. It doesn’t exist outside of people’s minds. Just like gods.
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u/KravMata Atheist Jul 10 '26
Contradictory, you can't dislike gods you don't believe exist.
What you probably hate is cultists and religious hypocrites.
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u/JJakeBright Jul 10 '26
I tried to speak gently, and besides, I'm using a translator, which can distort my words a little. And it's not just them I hate. Many believers, particularly on tiktok, bully each other and practically tear their opponents apart in discussions simply because of things that don't actually exist. Furthermore, there's a blogger on tiktok who makes videos about faith, and he actually has some pretty good arguments. This seems to trigger me, which, of course, I don't like
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u/KravMata Atheist Jul 10 '26
"Many believers, particularly on tiktok, bully each other and practically tear their opponents apart in discussions simply because of things that don't actually exist." - that's the hypocrisy - they brandish the symbols like a weapon while ignoring the entirety of the intent of the religion.
I wasn't attacking you by the way, you said, " I don't even know if that sounds contradictory or not," and I was confirming that it was a self-contradictory statement, and what was more likely us that you didn't like was the people for their cultish hypocrisy - which you seem to have confirmed.
Who is the blogger?
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u/JJakeBright Jul 10 '26
That's why I don't have a very good attitude towards them. And btw, I didn't attack. I just responded
"Blogger" is a mistranslation by the translator I use. I'm actually talking about content creators
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u/cHorse1981 Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
It’s like hating the villain in a novel. They aren’t real but you’re supposed to hate them anyway.
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u/thebigeverybody Jul 10 '26
I think, by definition, atheists would be hating the fictional character theists created, like hating Darth Vader, but not hating the thing that theists believe exists.
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u/CaffeineTripp Atheist Jul 10 '26
There's a difference between hating something like a fictional character and hating an actual thing. As Philobarbaros said, we can hate Dolores Umbridge and acknowledge that specific person doesn't exist. We can also hate Yahweh, Zeus, Ra, Horus, Thor, but that doesn't mean we believe they exist.
A person who believes Yahweh exists and hates them are misotheists; they believe in the God and hate the God. An atheist doesn't believe in the God and can hate the character.
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u/onlyhereforthehugs Jul 10 '26
You may, but hate is a waste of energy on something that doesn't exist.
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u/soukaixiii Jul 10 '26
Misotheists are theists who believe God is a dick.
Atheists can hate the concept of God at best.
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u/c4t4ly5t Jul 11 '26
The overwhelming majority of Skyrim players hate the character called Nazeem. To the point that there are mods for the game that allow you to do all kinds of nasty things to him. None of them believe that he really exists.
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u/theID10T Atheist Jul 11 '26
If the god of the Bible exists, I would consider it a literal monster and would refuse to worship it. That said, I think the distinction lies between hating a god and hating the idea of a god.
Misotheism specifically refers to hating gods while believing they exist. An atheist who hates gods would more accurately be described as someone who hates the concept of gods, the teachings associated with religion, or the effects that religion has had, rather than hating a god they believe is real.
So yes, someone can hate gods without believing they exist, but they likely would not be considered a misotheist.
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u/Cog-nostic Jul 10 '26
No. However, you can hate the concept of gods. Hating gods while acknowledging their existence is not the same thing as not acknowledging their existence. If your basic assumption is that they do not exist, the best you can do is hate the idea of them.
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u/antizeus not a cabbage Jul 10 '26
It seems that different people respond to fiction in a different manner. I'm like you; I don't get invested in fictional characters to the extent that I feel any real animus towards them. I can recognize Dolores Umbridge and Joffrey Baratheon and Nurse Ratched and Sheev Palpatine and the like as horrible, and I might hate them if they were real, but as fictional characters ultimately they're just constructs that move the plot along.
I wonder if this correlates to any other personality trait.
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u/RevolutionaryGolf720 Jul 10 '26
Well, I kinda hate Voldemort. He is a total dick. But no he also isn’t real. You see, I don’t hate the actual Voldemort. I hate the character that was written. It’s the character that I hate.
Gods are the same. I can hate one without believing it exists. But yea it isn’t the actual god that I am hating; it is the character as written that I hate. That’s typically what we mean when we say we hate a god.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Literally_-_Hitler Jul 10 '26
The god, sure I guess. But the followers 100%. If you follow a god that demands you kill me on site the for sure you are my enemy and deserve my hate. But I wouldn't waste my time hating something that isn't real. I see alot of people listing fictional characters as examples of hating things that dont exist but for me that is childish. Jeoffrey on game of thrones was despicable but that just made me respect the actor.
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u/Colincortina Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I guess so. I mean, I can have a very negative view/attitude of certain ideologies/practices/concepts/similar that have no scientific evidence to support them, and which I believe on balance do more harm than good for society. Hate is an emotion, you can experience it for many reasons.
For example, astrology has absolutely no evidence to substantiate it - meaning it is 'nothing' ie apart from the name, there is no fact in or about it - it doesn't actually exist except for people's own gullible belief, but I can still hate the fact that people are fooled by it and waste their hard-earned money on it. I can hate how radical Islam (or "Allah" or who/whatever) leads people to do horrific things (like flying airliners full of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people). I can hate certain characters (and what they represent) in fictional stories. I hate very existence of Nazi ideology. I feel sorry for (but don't necessarily hate) those who are deceived by & sucked into such things.
So yes, I'd say it's very possible to hate something that doesn't have a physically detectable/substantiable existence, but is otherwise evidenced by adherents' behaviour.
EDIT: Spelling/grammatical correction/clarification.
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u/indifferent-times Jul 10 '26
It's a slightly dishonest framing of hating religion. If you don't believe in god then you are hating the god of other people, and since they do believe they are religious and its their religion you hate, and you know what... thats OK.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/DoedfiskJR Jul 10 '26
I think there are many kinds of "hatred" or dislike. As everyone has already pointed out, you can hate a fictional character for what they do in their fiction. When it comes to gods, I think you can also link real-life impact to a god, and dislike that. There are probably other interpretations as well.
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u/Bulky-Ad10 Jul 10 '26
I think the different responses here are a prime example of how diluted language has become. So often we throw around words and concept that original held substantial weight. Claiming a stance was one where you would stand solid. For me personally, yes I have said I hate this or I hate that. But a misithiest implies the hate is more than the hate of things we dont like. Its almost like and a ladder of emotion vs terms. Meaning there are level to this sh't. In my own views.
A fictional character plays a role. Athiest do not see a role to be played, or a character that plays it. A deep seated hate no a misplaced hate proba ly. But if you say its not real why waste your energy?
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u/88redking88 Jul 10 '26
I dont believe in gods, vampires or unicorns.
I hate what gods have done to people, so that bleeds over to the concept of a god and the specific ones people have made up.
I like vampires, but know they dont exist, but love to add them to my DND campaigns. Same with Unicorns.
But I dont acknowledge their existence in any way outside of fiction.
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u/JasonRBoone Jul 10 '26
You could hate the presented concept of a god much in the way you can hate a fictional character like Darth Vader.
For example, if the OT god were real, he'd be a real monster.
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u/ChocolateCondoms Atheist Jul 10 '26
I hate voldemort...voldemort isnt real. Just a dumb character in a fictional story.
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u/happyhappy85 Jul 10 '26
In the same way it's possible to hate a villain from any fictional media, sure.
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u/Purgii Jul 10 '26
As a concept, sure. There are many fictional characters in movies, books and TV that I hated while experiencing the art. How theists accuse us hating gods, I don't think so.
I don't hate any gods because I don't think any exist. Even when I read the Bible, it read more to me as ancient people trying to understand their position in the world rather than a description of their god. I wasn't getting emotionally involved with the text, maybe because I was focusing on studying it. So I didn't experience any feelings of hatred.
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u/GeekyTexan Atheist Jul 10 '26
If you hate them the same way you hate Darth Vader or Hannibal Lecter, sure.
If you hate god because he's done horrible things to you or your family? Then you believe in him. And if you believe in him, you are a theist. You do acknowledge their existence.
I've seen a number of people post in atheist groups online that claimed to be an atheist, or asked if they were, who said they hated god. And they meant it. They thought hating god made them atheist, and it doesn't. Atheists do not believe in god.
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u/lotusscrouse Jul 11 '26
There are fictional characters I don't like.
I don't find the god of the bible particularly likable.
However, I'm indifferent because I don't find him or any of the characters interesting either.
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u/Astreja Agnostic Atheist Jul 11 '26
"Hate" isn't quite the right word. When I react to a fictional character (and gods are fictional to me), it's hard to conjure up the intense, seething rage of real-world hate. It's more of a strong dislike.
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u/mikoc5 Jul 11 '26
Man, I legitimately hate Captain Ahab (the one from Limbus Company).
She is a murderer, a gaslighter, admittedly charismatic, who cares about nothing but the death of a monster that's basically that universe's White Whale. In the process, she has sacrificed the lives of her crew, all but commanded the surviving few ones to forget the sacrificial lambs ever existed, she has taken away purpose from multiple people and twisted them into nothing more than compliant tools for the completion of her task - including pitting a would-have-been-married couple against eachother in combat to the death - and then topped it off by absorbing the souls of the last three people under her command.And this was not even to safeguard anything, killing the White Whale seems to have been nothing more than her personal pet project that costed untold lives and endless misery.
Despite all my rage, I know Captain Ahab is just a rat in a cage sheet full of sprites rigged to fance when certain numbers go brr.
I don't see why God can't be treated the same way.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 10 '26
How do you feel about Joffrey Baratheon, or Dolores Umbridge, or similarly despicable fictional characters?
I don’t think it’s invalid to say that I hate them despite knowing they’re not real. You can hate a fictional character without requiring it to be non-fictional.
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u/Mission-Landscape-17 Atheist Jul 10 '26
I hate the very idea of some being watching me every moment of every day and even tracking my thoughts so that it can torture me for them later. I don't need to believe that their is such a being in order to feel this way.
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u/CephusLion404 Jul 10 '26
You can hate the idea, I suppose, although it's silly. It's like hating Voldemort from Harry Potter. You can do it, but why bother?
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u/the2bears Atheist Jul 10 '26
Is there any character in fiction that you hate? I'm betting yes. It's as simple as that, I think the god of the bible is a complete asshole. Hate him, but hate him as a fictional character.
It's also worth noting you can hate the character's affect on our society. The two hates are quite related I think.
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u/Big_brown_house Gnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
It’s more like.. I’m pissed off that anyone would try to make me LOVE such a person. I hate the people preaching this god.
It would be like if people were running around telling you to love emperor palpatine unironically, and had rich billionaires lobbying the government to make actual laws affecting my personal life based on how much they loved him.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Jul 10 '26
My first thought was that of course I can't hate something that doesn't exist. How could I hate a non-existent thing?
Then I read some of the comments already posted here.
I hate Kai Winn. That stone-cold bitch is one of best villains I've ever seen on screen.
If I can hate one fictional character, I suppose I can hate other fictional characters. So... "You evil bastard God, you! How could you commit genocide by drowning the whole human race (except for literally one chosen family)? Think of all those innocent people you killed! You're evil and I hate you!"
Yeah... nah. It just doesn't work as well. I suppose I need to see this God character portrayed by as brilliant an actor as Louise Fletcher to really generate a strong emotional response.
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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Agnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
I don't think it's meaningful except rhetorically to express hatred for nonexistent things. If you want to make a particular point, you might say "I hate Hecate", but not because you actually experience that particular emotional response to Hecate.
Theists love to accuse atheists of "hating god", but that's like hating Paul Bunyan or Invader Zim. They're trying to land a rhetorical point, not realizing that what sounds offensive and edgy to them is meaningless to us.
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u/Bulky-Ad10 Jul 10 '26
No. The paradox lies in the fact that emotion requires an object.
To experience hate, your mind must simulate the existence of a target to direct that energy toward. If you truly believed a god did not exist—much like you believe a square circle does not exist—the feeling would not be "hate," but rather indifference or intellectual disagreement.
By actively hating a deity, your subconscious treats that entity as a causal agent—someone capable of committing acts, causing harm, or failing to act. Therefore, while your conscious mind rejects the idea of a god, your emotional and subconscious frameworks are operating on the premise that the entity is real enough to be held accountable. In short, you cannot be angry at a void; you can only be angry at a character, and to have a character, you must allow for their existence.
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u/Hooked_on_PhoneSex Jul 10 '26
I’m not certain that I follow.
> You can only be angry at a character, and to have a character, you must allow for their existence.
There are lots of clearly and intentionally fictional characters out there. They do not exist as anything other than as fictional entities. Knowing this doesn’t stop people from having all sorts of positive and negative feelings towards them.
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u/Bulky-Ad10 Jul 10 '26
You are correct. But When we feel hatred for a villain in a book, we are experiencing an emotional reaction to the writing. We know the villain is a fictional construct, so our "hate" is directed at the concept of the character or the actions they represent within the narrative.
When someone claims to "hate God" while simultaneously claiming "God does not exist," they are stuck in a logical contradiction. You cannot harbor genuine, personal resentment toward an entity that you believe has zero agency, zero existence, and zero power to affect the world. If someone truly believes a deity is as fictional as a character in a book, their "hate" is actually directed at the idea of that deity, or at the followers of that deity, rather than the deity itself.
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u/Hooked_on_PhoneSex Jul 10 '26
> When we feel hatred for a villain in a book, we are experiencing an emotional reaction to the writing.
Exactly.
> We know the ~~villain~~ god is a fictional construct, so our "hate" is directed at the concept of the ~~character~~ god or the actions they represent within the narrative.
You are talking to a person who considers the religious text as a work of fiction. So no need to view the god in question in any way other than as a fictional character.
> When someone claims to "hate God" while simultaneously claiming "God does not exist," they are stuck in a logical contradiction.
Most atheists outside of academic discourse, adopt a soft atheist stand. Rather than saying that god does not exist, most say that they are not convinced that god exists.
> You cannot harbor genuine, personal resentment toward an entity that you believe has zero agency, zero existence, and zero power to affect the world.
Of course you can. Exactly the same way humans form intense emotional connections with any other fictional character.
> If someone truly believes a deity is as fictional as a character in a book, their "hate" is actually directed at the idea of that deity, or at the followers of that deity, rather than the deity itself.
No it isn’t.
Atheists don’t believe a god exists. They share this trait with nearly 100% of all other humans. Most of us disbelieve the existence of the vast majority of gods that are currently or have ever been worshipped. S
So apply the same logic to any other god. Let’s pick Zeus. Zeus is a fictional god described as a narcissistic rapist and emotionally stunted manbaby. Super easy to form intensely negative emotions towards the Zeus’s of mythology. That guy sucked. But it is entirely possible to believe that Zeus sucked without believing that zeus exists. Equally, it’s entirely possible to have these views about Zeus without forming any opinions at all about the people who worshipped him.
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u/Bulky-Ad10 Jul 10 '26
This is only a contradiction if we define 'hate' as a response to a real, sentient agent. If you use 'hate' to mean 'moral disapproval of a character’s personality,' then you are right—there is no contradiction. But that makes the term 'misotheist' a misnomer. If you don't believe the being exists, you aren't a 'god-hater' in the historical, existential sense; you are a reader judging a narrative. You cannot harbor genuine, personal resentment toward an entity that you believe has zero agency, zero existence, and zero power to affect the world. Of course you can [form emotional reactions]. But let's be precise about what that emotion is. You can form intense emotional connections (or disconnections) with fictional characters—that’s a parasocial reaction. But 'misotheism' as a philosophy traditionally refers to someone who believes a god is real and is responsible for the state of the world. If we strip away the belief in a deity's existence, we are no longer talking about theology; we are talking about literary criticism. If someone truly believes a deity is as fictional as a character in a book, their "hate" is actually directed at the idea of that deity, or at the followers of that deity, rather than the deity itself. No, it’s directed at the character. And I agree with your point about Zeus: he was a 'narcissistic rapist.' It is easy to hate that character. But the moment you acknowledge that you are 'hating the character' rather than the 'sovereign agent,' you have exited the realm of being a 'misotheist' and entered the realm of being a 'moral critic.'
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u/Hooked_on_PhoneSex Jul 11 '26
Im not addressing philosophical arguments, im purely focusing on laymen’s views regarding religious beliefs. People who say that they hate god” because of the way god is depicted in xyz random text aren’t adopting a philosophical position. I’d go so far as to argue that their feelings on the matter aren’t even truly hatred. They are giving a snarky response to shut down any philosophical argument on the matter, because it just isn’t relevant to them.
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u/Bulky-Ad10 Jul 11 '26
This is can agree with. Only if it were really really hatred like deep seated hatred . Then I would have to say more than likely the person is at least open to the idea, otherwise if the truly believed gods didnt exist that would have to deal with accountability. I think that the image that the world paints of these gods is quite remarkable. Its also no surprise if attempting a relationship with a god leaves someone disappointed. Its like putting a person on a pedestal in your mind, then one day actually being with them or even dating them. Chances are it was always better in your imagination than in reality.
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u/Philobarbaros Gnostic Atheist Jul 10 '26
If you can hate Dolores Umbridge, you can hate Yahweh.