[phoenix_fire]

Before I go into some of the worst offenders, I'm going to make it clear that typical atheists simply put in their two cents on subjects of interest to them. They aren't particularly antagonistic, but they do have an opinion on the matter. But they're probably not the ones you're thinking about.

On the other hand, there are some atheists that, plain and simple, hate Christianity deeply. Whether it is because they had a traumatic experience with it in the past or because it is simply where the potential for cruelty inherent in all men finds its expression in them, they absolutely and unobjectively hate it.

Contrary to what one would think and to the supposedly enlightened nature of atheism, these anti-theists are some of the most hateful and bigoted people you will ever meet in cyberspace. You got it: I said bigoted. It doesn't just mean uneducated southern rednecks. The second they find out you're a Christian, they assume that you're a white male living somewhere in the South who votes Republican, watches football, eats tons of red meat, has no idea what's going on in the world around them, hates gays, loves war...well, you get the picture. I've even had one person tell me that if someone is a theist, their reason and rationality are automatically suspect. As if a theist couldn't be relied upon to tie their shoes in the morning. There is automatically a bigoted response that Christians must be ignorant, unintelligent, uneducated illiterates in order to believe what they believe. As if no intelligent and rational man would. And that's just the highbrow stuff.

Some anti-theists are far more direct in their hatred. Some believe Christianity to be so logically untenable that even the weakest, stupidest, most pointless and off-topic argument from their fingertips can damage, overload, or tear-in-half anything that a Christian might say. Therefore, they don't even look to see what the argument was before declaring themselves victor. And there are those that, apart from wanting to win the argument, want to humiliate, abuse, and beat to submission the theists that disagree with them. Those who claim to run you over with a truck on the boards and who really might if they met you in person.

I've had a member tell me that he would beat the Christianity out of me (figuratively speaking). Implying not only that he hates Christianity, but that he relishes the idea of psychologically crushing Christians. This takes a special kind of hatred and fear. There are those here that would take the side of a religion that they would hate even more if it were dominant where they lived in order to take another shot at Christianity. I've even seen a member salivating at the idea of Muslim conquest of the West. (If you're wondering why he would enjoy his own imperilment, he has the oddly ignorant idea that the Muslim overlords would play nice with him since he's an atheist...ya know...since they have bombs that know not to hit atheists...yeah...). It's a single-minded blind hatred that is not open for debate or able to see consequences.

Then there are the clinical haters that say that Christianity is a disease of the mind or an instrument of child abuse. They try to find every chance to outlaw its expression. They take every chance to talk about the Inquisition, and they'll blame anything even remotely related to Christians entirely on Christian thought and belief. As if every single Christian living now liked to torture innocents in a past life or something. As if Christians still to this day think that kind of behavior is acceptable and/or scriptural. But we still feel bad about it. Even though we know that our faith never called for something like that. Even though neither we nor anyone we know had any part in it. They enjoy relating Christians to the KKK, Hitler, Torquemada. They conveniently ignore those who suffer, sacrifice, and make the world a better place in the name of Christ. Because hatred is myopic.