Abstract/TLDR Version:
Atheists have a reputation for being angry. It’s true. I am angry. I’m angry about the violence perpetuated in the name of religion. I’m angry about the persecution of humanity’s greatest thinkers for questioning religious dogma. I’m angry about the loss of human knowledge through the ages by the destruction of ideas in conflict with religion. I'm angry about the repression of Native cultures in the name of religion. I’m angry about the exploitation of followers by religious authorities and organizations for money and sexual abuse. I’m angry about religious infiltration and distortion of modern politics. I'm angry about the infiltration of religion in the public schools and public venues. But above all, I’m angry that 2400 years after the execution of Socrates, religion is still the overwhelmingly dominant belief in society. In the two millennia since Jesus Christ, some of the greatest philosophers, thinkers and writers have considered aspects of religious doctrine, and failed to consider the most basic question – “what if none of this is real”? Why is this left to me, in the 21st century, to point out that the emperor has no clothes? There is no evidence today that supports the existence of the supernatural world, and logical reasoning yields the conclusion that God does not exist, given the world that we see. I have other important problems to deal with but here I am, blogging about atheism.
Image Note:
I wrote this entire post, then searched for an appropriate image to convey my notion of the angry atheist. To my delight, I found the cover art of a book by Greta Christina drawn by Casimir Fornalski. This image perfectly captures the sentiment I was looking for in this blog post. To my even greater delight, I ordered and read the book, “Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things that Piss Off the Godless”. Not surprisingly, Greta Christina touches on many of the same themes and examples I used in my post, and did so much better and more completely. Christina’s book is an excellent rendering of everything I am trying to say. Please buy and read this excellent book.
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Atheist.
For a moment, look at the word, and picture that person in your mind’s eye. What kind of person do you see? How do they speak? Do you find that person friendly? Pleasant? Attractive? Or unpleasant and disagreeable?
As an atheist myself, I find that I don’t have positive associations with the word. In my experience, too often, other atheists have been argumentative and disrespectful of others’ beliefs. I’ve developed a bias that presumes atheists are angry, tedious and tiresome.
In this blog, I have often mentioned a particular atheist college classmate. She is relentlessly dismissive of the beliefs of others, aggressive, tedious and tiresome in her interactions on social media. On the positive side of the leger, her loud advocacy of atheism has enabled a number of other classmates to admit that they, too, are atheists. Perhaps I am a member of that group.
I know that pleasant atheists exist; I’m acquainted with several. For the most part, they keep their disbelief to themselves, do not challenge others’ beliefs. Like gay people of the last generation, they stay in the closet.
Is it possible to openly be an atheist, without confronting and challenging the beliefs of religious people? It seems as though the very existence of atheism challenges religious belief. When I have presented my disbelief on social media, the interaction seems to end in one of two ways: 1) “You will burn in hell and regret your choice for eternity”, or 2) “I will pray for you,” which is a passive-aggressive way of disrespecting my convictions.
There’s a stereotype that atheists are angry, perhaps with good reason. Just Google images for “Angry Atheist” and you’ll find abundant discussion threads and images. The results include a cheerful yellow mug with the words “Angry Atheist”, Angry Atheist buttons, blog posts, books, newspaper articles, and lots of images of people screaming. As mentioned above, this is how I found the book cover for the book by Greta Christina, which perfectly represents the theme of this post.
In her book “River of Grass”, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas mentions an incident involving a boat in a storm. A man was captain of a small sailing boat; his passengers were his father and a pastor. At a critical moment in the storm, the captain ordered the pastor to cut the mainsail to stabilize the boat. Instead, the pastor fell to his knees, and loudly prayed for the Lord to save the boat. The boat crashed, and the captain’s father died. For the rest of the captain’s life, whenever he encountered a discussion about faith, he angrily argued for atheism and against religion.
Atheists are angry out of empathy for the boat captain, for this incident, and for thousands of other events over the centuries. The following paragraphs are a list of things to be angry about.
War, Murder and Violence in the Name of Religion
I have to admit, I am angry. I’m angry about the Crusades. I’m angry about the Aztec prisoners who were killed to appease the gods, the ritually slaughtered neolithic Danish bog victims and the Mayan youth thrown into cenotes, and the murder of Plains Indian children for the power of their spirits. I’m angry at the ritual murder of the children of Inca chiefs, and the present-day ritual murder of children in Africa for the purpose of folk medicine. I’m angry about the 70,000 concubines, servants and their families who were buried alive to serve Emperor Qin Shi Huang in the afterlife. I’m angry about the servants and concubines killed and buried with Egyptian pharaohs and Scythian kings.
I’m angry about the tortures of the Catholic Inquisition and the persecution of Jews. I’m angry about the roughly 50,000 women who were executed as witches in Europe and America between 1400 and 1775. I’m angry at the violent deaths of up to 2,000,000 people in the religious violence during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.
I’m angry at the sacrifice of animals to appease the gods, which was practiced in more religions than I can name, or the killing of animals to accompany humans after death.
Violent Repression of Independent Thinkers
For millennia, religious traditionalists have repressed or killed some of the brightest humans to ever live. This repression of independent thought inhibited other inventive, philosophically-minded people.
I’m angry that religious traditionalists tried and executed Socrates for crimes of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. I’m angry about the death of Hypatia of Alexandria, a pagan philosopher, astronomer & mathematician murdered by a mob of Christians. Giordano Bruno was the first known person to realize that stars were distant suns which might have planets and life. Bruno who was burned alive in 1600 for suggesting that Mary was probably not a virgin, the Holy Trinity really didn’t make sense, and eternal damnation wasn’t consistent with the notion of a loving God. Galileo wasn’t executed, but was threatened with torture and silenced by the Catholic Church. The persecution of Galileo (who was pardoned by the pope 359 years later) ended the development of Renaissance science in southern Europe, leaving northern Europe to continue the advancement of civilization. I’m angry about that.
Destruction of Human Knowledge in the Name of Religion
I’m angry about the destruction of books and records for religious reasons. The Wikipedia article “List of Destroyed Libraries” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries) lists dozens of libraries from antiquity to modern times which were destroyed because they contained texts at odds with the prevailing religion. The libraries include the library at Alexandria (destroyed in several events, not all of which were religious). At Alexandria, Caliph Omar gave this order: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them." I’m angry at the nearly complete destruction of Mayan and Aztec written works by Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests. Religious purges of libraries also happened in China, India, Greece, Spain, England, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Constantinople, etc. At Cordoba, all books containing “ancient science” were destroyed as heretical. How much farther would civilization have advanced if this knowledge had not been destroyed?
Repression of Indigenous Cultures
I’m angry about the repression of indigenous cultures in the name of religion. Across the world, Western missionaries moved to far-flung parts of the globe, often on the heels of military invaders, and taught indigenous peoples that their beliefs and customs were wrong. Varying degrees of coercion were used. Entire languages were eradicated; written literature, history and knowledge were burned. Cultural norms of ownership, family structure, diet and construction were erased. Some of my ancestors participated in that destruction. In a world without missionaries, we would have much more human cultural diversity today, and a wider range of knowledge and art. To me, perhaps the worst of it is that missionaries replaced native beliefs with fraudulent beliefs. It may have been correct that there are no animal or ancestor spirits to worship, but the religion that replaced these superstitions is equally false.
Incredibly, repression of Native culture is still happening today, in the United States. Today, The Guardian reported on a recent event in Arizona, in which Native Apache teen girls were expelled from a Lutheran school for performing in a traditional Native ceremony. The girls were sent a letter by the school, offering to re-instate them if they confessed that they were worshiping the devil in the Native dance, and that they promised not to do it again. The expulsions were part of a long-standing pattern of denigrating and suppressing Native culture. Apparently, religious freedom only applies to the predominant Christian religion. I'm angry about that.
Exploitation of Followers by Religious Authorities
In my blog post “Is Religion Benign? Part I”, I discuss a number of financial and sexual scandals involving religious leaders. It seems that sexual scandals are an occupational hazard for televangelists and megachurch pastors, and I don’t need to repeat reporting on pedophile Catholic priests. It is disturbingly common for individuals who have gained the trust of religious believers to exploit that trust for sex and money. I’m angry about that.
There’s further institutional financial exploitation by churches. Large churches accumulate massive amounts of wealth from members’ donations. The LDS (Mormon) church holds an investment fund worth about $50 billion, or about $3000 per member. The Catholic church also holds a massive amount of wealth. Relatively small discrete parts of the church are known to hold assets in excess of $73 billion. Not included in that estimate is real estate which extends over an area the size of Texas. Other denominations have also accumulated much wealth on an institutional scale.
So what’s the problem? Shouldn’t parishioners be free to spend their money in donations to these businesses? (I do consider churches to be businesses.) The problem is that the product these businesses are selling is a fraud. Imagine ordering something from Amazon that was advertised to help you in your daily life and give you eternal life after death. The seller is offering an invisible product that will be delivered to your door in an invisible box. All you have to do is send the money and believe in the invisible box. Wouldn’t you have a problem with that? I do. I’m angry about that. I’m angry on behalf of the people who are being defrauded.
In the United States, as in most countries, churches do not pay taxes. It is clear that churches are not non-profit organizations. They’re simply businesses selling an invisible fraudulent product, and paying no tax on their earnings. Communities could benefit from those taxes. I’m angry about that, too.
The Modern Conflation of Religion and Politics
I’m angry that the modern conservative movement has coopted and conflated fundamentalist Christianity with Republican politics. Christianity, as seen in the actions and words of Christ, rejects religious authorities, criticizes the wealthy and lifts up the down-trodden of the world. If anything, it is a leftist religious ideology. Somehow these priorities have been swept aside by conservatives, who imbue their political campaigns with the infallibility of faith in God. It is a mutual corruption of the religion and of the political system, especially the constitutional separation of church and state.
I've written previously about the Seven Mountains movement on my political blog (here: https://debatablypolitical.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-seven-mountains-movement.html). This movement is part of the Christian Nationalist movement that intends to create an American Christian theocracy, eliminating American religious diversity. I'm angry about that, too.
Infiltration of Religion into Schools, Public Venues and Public Events
The state of Louisiana now requires that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public classroom. Posting the Ten Commandments is clearly unconstitutional, and was rejected by the Supreme Court over 40 years ago. Nevertheless, religious conservatives continue in their efforts to indoctrinate children and mold society according to their ideology. Similarly, there are continuing efforts to post the Ten Commandments in courthouses and government buildings. The supposed justification for this is the asserted foundation of Western ethics and law in the Ten Commandments. But the real reason conservatives want to post the Ten Commandments is the first Commandment: “You shall have no other God before me.” The intent is to discredit non-Judeo-Christian religions in the minds of children and throughout society. Conservatives’ justification for posting the Ten Commandments is false and disingenuous. I’m angry about that.
It is common to have a prayer invocation before government meetings, graduations, convocations and other public events. Why do we do this? While some jurisdictions rotate responsibility for the invocation among different denominations (and are lampooned by Satanists and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster), why do we have prayer at public functions at all? If an event is a religious gathering it is fair to begin with a prayer. If the event is not a religious event, there should not be a prayer! I’m angry about the disregard for those who do not believe.
The Persistence and Modern-Day Existence of Religion
Of all the reasons to be angry at religion, I am most angry that religion still exists. From the perspective of our stone-age ancestors, religion made sense. Religion provided an explanation for the mysteries of the world. Lightning? It was the gods. Sickness? The gods. Success or failure? The gods. Seasons? The gods. Marine fossils in the mountains? Clearly the gods. Good luck or misfortune? Definitely due to obedience or disobedience to the gods.
But today we understand things better. We know why lightning, sickness, seasons and mountains exist. We understand that random events produce results that can be good or bad for people. Today, there is no reason to believe in gods, or evidence that gods exist. Observation and reasoning show that we do not live in a world consistent with the existence of the kind of god promoted by mainstream religion.
We often denigrate religions of primitive or historic cultures, presenting those religions as superstition or myth. Even in fiction, we often show primitive people worshipping false gods. But we rarely cast that critical eye on religions of our own culture. Instead, we accept Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Sikhism, Baha’ism and Taoism more or less in the same form they have had for a millennium or more. I might note that Voodoo, with four times the number of adherents as Judaism, is generally rejected by Americans as superstition, while some of the rest are generally accepted as a legitimate variation on the worship of God.
But why do religions persist? Are they all not superstition, attributing consciousness, will and agency to non-material spiritual entities, of which there is no evidence? In the 2000 years since Jesus walked the earth, why haven’t people separated the message of kindness and forgiveness from the mystical message about the existence of a father in heaven? Of the great thinkers through the ages, why didn’t Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Spinoza or Voltaire conclude that religion was entirely nonsense? Many of these thinkers were critical of the religion of their time, but none of them took the crucial step of recognizing that nothing about religion is true.
So, in the year 2024, about 90% of my fellow Americans believe in some kind of immaterial beings, with the majority of those believing in a divine power with perfect understanding, power and presence. There’s no good evidence of any such beings. There’s no process by which consciousness can be maintained without material means, such as a physical brain. And there are inconsistencies between the world we should expect with a divine presence, and the world we actually live in.
Conclusion
Individually, I can respect the beliefs of religious people, but collectively, I cannot. I’m angry at how religious agendas drive politics in this country I’m angry that religion fuels conflicts around the world. I’m angry that religion mis-directs a huge amount of wealth and human energy which could be better used making the world a better place. I’m angry when I’m scrolling channels on the television and encounter a megachurch preacher raging against good government. I’m angry when I drive past the parking lot of a large church on any Sunday, and look at the number of people who routinely gather to be bamboozled by a neolithic delusion.
Given the history of religious persecution of those who voiced even modest objections to religious orthodoxy, it may be understandable that philosophers of the Middle Ages didn’t promote atheism. I can understand not wanting to be burned alive or tortured. But as those practices died away, the reticence to speak clearly about rational disbelief persists. So it falls to me, and I’m angry about that. There are other things that need to be done, but for now, I’m writing this blog.
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References
The book cover to Greta Christina's book "Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless" is used without permission and not for profit, and will be removed upon a received request. Casimir Fornalski.is the illustrator for the book cover. You should buy and read this book.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/24/apache-students-school-reservation
Repression of Apache culture by the East Fork Lutheran
Church School of Arizona.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/511133/identify-religious-spiritual.aspx
Decline of formal religious affiliation, and replacement by spiritualism.
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/02/10/how-much-money-does-catholic-church-have/
Wealth of the Catholic Church includes $73 billion in
documented assets, clearly representing only a small fraction of the
total. Unvalued real estate is an area
roughly the size of Texas, often in lucrative markets.
“So we have entered a period of greater transparency with
the Catholic Church. But it’s likely we’ll never truly know the extent of its
assets.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-13/catholic-church-worth-$30-billion-investigation-finds/9422246
The Catholic Church holds $30 billion in assets in Australia
alone.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/08/25/lds-church-sees-its-billions-grow/
The LDS church held $49.3 billion in financial assets as of
8/2023.
There are about 17 million Mormons in the world. There are about 1.4 billion Catholics.
Appendix
Just as there are innumerable paths to faith, there are various paths to atheism. Some of those paths, rather than being a rational, serious search for truth, involve an oppositional tendency to reject the status quo. These atheists are interested in tearing things down instead of building things up.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair is an example of the latter kind of atheist. Ms. O’Hair was a polarizing figure of the 1960s and 1970s, notable as the founder of the American Atheists organization. Ms. O’Hair’s lawsuit Murray v. Curlett in 1963 was a landmark case that went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that mandatory prayer and mandatory Bible reading in schools were unconstitutional, marking a pivotal point for religious freedom in American society. Ms. O’Hair was a self-described radical feminist but rejected the women’s liberation movement of the time. She was an anarchist who had conflicts with almost every institution she encountered, a Holocaust denier, and supporter of the Soviet Union at a time when the Soviet regime was horrific. Although I respect her legal legacy and feminist ideals, I cannot hold Ms. O’Hair in high regard. It seems to me that she was not driven by the search for truth, but was only interested in conflict for its own sake and the destruction of the status quo.
