#i've got a dozen more examples i could've put in this post

[captainjonnitkessler]

Atheists can talk about their atheism in the blandest, most matter-of-fact way possible and will still get accused of being “angry” and “bitter” and “pushy”. I just saw a post where a pushy Christian tried to preach to a room of non-Christians and verbally got their ass handed to them (and then everybody clapped, I’m sure), and one comment said they liked it because “the snooty atheist AND the pushy Christian both got their comeuppance!” The only thing the atheist said was “I don’t believe in God”, after everybody else had listed all the gods THEY believed in. There was a post on AITA where an atheist got badgered about their beliefs - at work, and after their coworkers had a twenty-minute discussion on THEIR beliefs - and after several minutes of trying to deflect the conversation, admitted that they don’t believe in an afterlife. They got voted the asshole because someone in the room was grieving and they “should have been more tactful” - even though they tried multiple times to deflect out of tact and were essentially harassed for it. I once reblogged a post that said calling victims of Christian abuse “cultural Christians” was cruel and someone I thought was a friend publicly announced that I was a bigoted asshole who was just angry because I knew that what they were saying was true.

And once again I cannot stress enough that that’s exactly what the fundamentalist party line is on atheism. Atheists are angry because deep down they know that fundamentalists are right and just don’t want to admit it. Atheists are pushy because they’re miserable and they want everyone else to be just as miserable. Atheists are bitter because they know they can never truly be happy. Atheists are joyless because you can’t know joy without God. There’s a whole fundamentalist movie genre about those snooty, elitist, angry atheists getting taken down a peg by good faithful Christians and some of those plots are identical to posts on this website.

Atheists are allowed to be angry. But I know so many who walk on absolute eggshells around religious people and still get these accusations thrown in their face the second they try talking about any atheist issue. And if your “progressive” space is using the exact same language about atheists as your average evangelical then maybe that’s a good reason to be angry actually.