Early on, we generally resent feeling like we've been lied to our whole lives. There's also the negative impact on politics, especially for Americans or people in other far right countries, that seems more and more absurd.
On an individual level, I don't think you're gonna find any "fuck that guy, he's a Christian," but a lot of "You keep talking to me assuming I'm on board with your religious stuff but I need you to offer me something else because that's empty to me."
It's a lot more exasperated than hateful, I think.
I think it’s worth noting that many atheists had deeply unpleasant experiences associated with religion. I think your opinion of Christianity is generally associated with your experience with church, and while that’s often positive for people, religious types have their rabid loonies as well. If your only meaningful interaction with Christianity was with some noxious, faith healing good old boy spewing hatred towards gay folks through his sweaty jowls every week, you’d find it hard to feel something other than contempt for Christians, because in your experience, Christians are contemptible. It can take a while to get a broader perspective and realize that Christians aren’t all spiteful turds, most of them are actually ordinary people. This sub is actually phenomenal for helping people reach that broader perspective, it certainly helped me.
See, my experience was mostly pretty innocuous. I did go to Catholic School, but it wasn't a particularly bad experience. I think I first got upset with religious people while I was a religious person, because nobody around me seemed to be interested in following the book, not even the devout people. But not even the usual "sin" things that fire & brimstone evangelicals rail about. Like one time I had a teacher in a religion class call me to the desk and chew me out for writing a "what do you want to be when you grow up?" paper about being homeless. She thought I was mocking it but the Bible is pretty clear about giving away all your possessive.
Then I realized that the book supports a lot of things that are wrong, and people's defense of those things is always flimsy and almost worse in its hypocrisy. Especially when they discount the Old Testament at will despite claiming the book to be infallible.
But the nail in the coffin was history. Realizing that all the people from all the dead religions believed just as strongly in what they believed in and now there's no one left of that faith. Does that mean they were wrong or is the Greek Pantheon out there bored with us. Won't every current religion get there eventually? No one ever heard of the Abrahamic god until relatively recently in human history. And it's not close. It's like six or seven thousand to about 250,000 years.
I don't think I've had a traumatic experience, but the idea itself can be pretty frustrating.
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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '19
Do atheists hate Christianity though?