Why are Atheists Angry at God?
Why are atheists angry at God? Joe Carter, web editor of First Things, cites studies recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that those who donāt believe in God tend to be the people most angry with Him. (Click here for the entire article.)
Of course, we cannot take aggregate data and apply it to specific individuals. It may be true that atheists on average are more angry with God than believers, that that doesnāt mean atheist X is. However, Iāve found the anger from many of the atheists with whom Iāve interacted to be quite palpable, beyond what you would expect if one were engaged in an honest pursuit of the truth. In fact, some individual atheists admit as much.
Atheist Thomas Nagel, Professor at NYU, admits that he has a cosmic authority problem with God. He thinks the same is true of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. When you read their books or hear their debates, itās hard to disagree with Nagel. Hitchens in particular calls himself an āanti-theistā and God a cosmic dictator in a ācelestial North Korea.ā Thatās why I said in our two debates that Christopherās attitude seems to be, āThere is no God and I hate Him.ā (Maybe Iām misreading Hitchens, but I donāt think so. In addition to the evidence from Christopherās own statements, his brother Peter, who wrote āThe Rage Against God,ā comes to the same basic conclusion writing of Christopherās āpassion against God.ā).
One has to ask, why all the anger? To say that atheists are just angry with believers wouldnāt explain it because the study found anger with God, not his followers. If God doesnāt exist, why be angry with Him? The apostle Paul had an answer that he recorded in Romans 1:18-32. But I wonder what you think.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!