I’m Not “Mad At God”

22 Responses to “I’m Not “Mad At God””

1. FrodoSaves on December 18th, 2008 at 11:26 pm

   How could I be angry at something that doesn’t exist?

   You could be mad at him for not existing… Wait, no you couldn’t. It’s the same fundamental lack of knowledge that makes people think atheists are the same as anarchists, when all we really have in common is the baby eating thing. Jeez…

2. Dirk B. on December 19th, 2008 at 11:40 am

   Silly Christians, if you’re mad at god, then he exists. If you believe in the existence of a god, you aren’t an atheist.

3. Volly on December 20th, 2008 at 6:56 am

   Back in ’02 when I first curtailed my religious activities, I too thought my abrupt change of mind was “anger at God” for not answering prayers.  As time went on, it became clear who the anger was really directed at.  The same person it’s been all my life:

   Me.

   For being gullible, too easily led, guilty for normal thoughts and actions, abandoning my previous liberal ideals, inclined to look for answers outside of myself, and more than anything, for WASTING MY TIME on such nonsense as prayer, bobble study and hanging around with morons.

   No — I don’t think all Christians or religious believers are morons, but it certainly is easy to bump into them in the course of one’s day.  You encounter someone who uses faulty (or no) logic, has a childlike naivete, a short-sighted worldview and falls back on stereotypes and you can pretty much lay money on their secular/sectarian orientation. 

   Wish I could chat longer but Mom’s Taxi is warming up in the driveway.  Have a good day, all.

   /v

4. Joy on December 20th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

   Now I am mad at unicorns!   

   Seriously, no, not mad at God, and I’ve heard that old chestnut, too, from time to time.  God just doesn’t seem real at all.  My anger is more with the insensitive people who’ve cornered me and said, “Do you know where you are going after you die? I know where I’M going!” And then they won’t let you be. And they think they are introducing you to ideas you’ve never thought on. But I suppose they mean well. So I try not to be mad at them when they are pushy.

   I do get mad when people say that no atheist could ever be a good president. (See Mitt Romney and others for this sort of talk.) I just voted for a church-going guy for president, as if I have a choice… I would say I’m mad at the discrimination against me for what is not an evil trait.

5. Joy on December 20th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

   Great blog, by the way. Thank you for “coming out” and being so thoughtful about it.

6. lneely on December 24th, 2008 at 12:52 am

   Good post.  Interestingly, even when I didn’t think the concept of god was absurd, I was never angry with God.  I was angry with the church, with fellow believers, with those self-proclaimed Jesus freaks!, and especially with that guy who stood between God and myself and who arrogantly asserted that he knew more than I about what God wanted.  So I left and never looked back.

   The more time I spent away from the church, the more absurd the idea of god became, and the rest is history.

7. Ed on December 24th, 2008 at 11:51 am

   Mark, Joy and Postsimian,
   Greetings in the Mighty Name of Jesus!  (I’m thinking this may be my last post so I’m going all out.)
   You know not many people realize that John the Baptist, whom Jesus said was one of the greatest prophets, struggled through a season of unbelief.  John prepared Jesus’ way, preaching repentence and declaring that One was to come after him who would be mightier and baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.  He openly declared, “Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.”  Then after John was arrested, he sent word to Jesus, “Are You the coming One or should we be looking for another.”  Why did he doubt?

   Well Jesus was supposed to set the captives free, right?  Here John was, in prison, hearing rumors that they were going to decapitate him.  Doubt and unbelief enter when our personal experience doesn’t agree with our worldview.  The problem with John’s worldview, like all of us, is that it was incomplete.  We only know in part.
   What John probably didn’t realize at the time, but was to learn shortly, was that in addition to spreading the Good News of Christ’s salvation and victory over sin, sickness and death, His church is to mature in sacrificial living for the dying world around us.  And in some cases, like their Savior or any soldier who gives his life for his buddies in the heat of battle, pay the ultimate price for His Cause.

   As far as eyewitnesses for Kush K, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are sufficient for me.  He made some good points however.  There is no question God puts a premium on faith and humility which makes it tough on smart, good-looking people like the four of us.  I’m not sure why other than perhaps, “to whom much is given, much is required.”

   In parting, here are a couple of links to the Power of God in action today, including the healing of a baby’s heart, observed in ultrasound by an unbelieving obstetrician.

   Merry Christmas,

   Ed

8. bipolar2 on December 25th, 2008 at 4:10 pm

   ** the gospel truth isn’t **

   Matthew and Luke draw on Mark adding their own embellishments to reinforce narratives for early second century CE audiences. These works are not histories; they are propaganda. They’re “true” because they work. Conversion is a psychological process; the “good news” is a hard-sell Ponzi scheme.

   John’s always been the odd man out. For that reason the first three related tales are called the synoptic (same view) gospels. John mixes in half-digested Stoic philosophy or Stoicism as filtered by Philo of Alexandria.

   Perhaps John aimed to win over Greeks for whom a pre-existing divinity, the Logos, might be a better sales pitch than a divinized man. Caesar, for gods’ sake, had temples raised to the divinity of his “genius” outside of Italy.

   Anyway, no fundie (bible worshiper, inherent truth fanatic) will care. Any “fool for Christ” will cite Paul’s first letter to the underground xian cell in Corinth:

   27 God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are. . .1Cor1:27-28 NIV

   Paul and his fellow revenge seekers created a god sharing their nihilistic values. He and the primitive church had a perverse self-understanding, an inverted snobbery.

   Today’s fundies get their anti-intellectual, revengeful elitism from a document written in about 50 CE to rabble in a city already famed for centuries for its palatial homes belonging to well-maintained prostitutes. Paul often admonishes his new xians about giving way to fleshly temptations — those xian love feasts sometimes heated up.

   For you anti-supernaturalists, I suggest that you take a look at Michel Onfray’s short, clear, overview of what a working substitute to xianity would have to look like, Atheist Manifesto (2006). His proposal perforce introduces a lot of historical scholarship which Onfray summarizes very effectively.

   bipolar2 ©2008

9. Susan on January 22nd, 2009 at 2:14 am

   I can’t believe I just found this site. I’m the biggest heathen in the history of heathens. AWESOME! I have friends.

10. Cory on February 2nd, 2009 at 7:17 am

    So much energy, just to “not” believe in God (or anything else) belief in nothing IS still belief.

    The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on `explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that a window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through’ all things is the same as not to see. 

11. Neece on February 4th, 2009 at 12:50 am

    There is no god to be angry at. Invisible Pink Unicorns? Well….

12. Pablo on March 1st, 2009 at 3:53 pm

    So much energy, just to “not” believe in God (or anything else) belief in nothing IS still belief.

    And yet you guys put so much energy into believing. We can use the same argument against you, thus, your whole post is nullified.

    But really, that statement is ridiculous. I have no need to go to a special place every Sunday, no need to waste money and my time hosting special events for some other person’s birthday that isn’t even mine. I just sit back, relax, pop open a beer and watch some G4 TV.  You have to put so much more energy into believing – including attempting to convert people and defend your religion against simple questions – than we do into simply not giving a flying fuck. Really. The issue of God does not weigh on my mind every moment of my life. It’s incredible how stress-free I feel.

    School and my grades, however…another story

13. Jason R on March 3rd, 2009 at 9:19 am

    by frodo: How could I be angry at something that doesn’t exist?

    Thats my thought too.  I’m not mad at Shiva, Thor, Jupiter, Baal, Teshub,  Kushuh, Nergal, Ea, Enlil, Utu, Marduk, Lei Gong, Zao Jun, Zhon Kui, Osiris, Amun, Aten, Barasty, Aminon, Apu, Apocatequil, Ekkeko, Nana Buluku, Eshu, Aganju, Oba… ad infinitum..

14. Christopher Wing on March 9th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

    We can still be mad at the sheeple who follow, though.  They go out of their way to make my life difficult.

15. James Blackburn-Lynch on April 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am

    Perhaps you know this, but I do understand why so many Christians believe athiests are mad at god.  The truth is, they don’t believe in athiests.  And they do have reason.  There are many people, in the church, who call themselves athiests, or who say they were once athiests.  And these people are, in fact, just mad at a god they believe in.  This does often happen after something terrible happens in their lives. 

    Now these people truly think they are athiests.  At least, they use this word.  Of course, they are no such thing.  But if, as a believing Christina, these are the type of “athiests” you are most familiar with (which is almost assured since they actually go to your church!), then it’s not surprising 1) you think “athiests” are mad at god and 2) that there really is no such thing.

16. Alex on April 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm

    A recent ’30 Day’s’ episode highlighted this assumption with the statement: “What did Jesus ever do to you?” The atheist responded appropriately asking if he actually thought ‘atheism’ is anti-Christ and why such a view is an inherent contradiction.

17. Doug on April 23rd, 2009 at 11:20 am

    The issue is sometime, just sometime there are those who only call themselves Atheist because of their anger at God. You can tell them generally on the internet because every post is dripping with invectives and those seven words you can’t say on TV, and generally not just for humor’s sake.

    One particularly famous example of someone who called themselves an Atheist because they were angry at God would be Anne Rice.

    That aside, I can never quite put my anger behind me. I need just a little, as fuel.  Now this is not anger at this “god” character but at those that go affacting the world negatively due to the fanciful notion that this fiction is real.

    Why I blaspheme

    Imagine a popular fictional novel series came out, lets say The Harry Potter Series.
    Now imagine that people everywhere started talking about said series and started forming organizations about discussing it. The organizations declare that Magic and Hogwarts really exist. Everywhere you go there are people handing out flyers about “defence from the dark arts.” They even wake you up Saturday morning to try to convince you to join house Hufflepuff.
    These organizations lobby for tax free status, and insist that schools acknowlege the existence of magic…and politicians who are part of the organizations grant it to them. Magic is added to school textbooks. In order for anyone to be taken seriously in politics they have to declare there allegience to Hogwart’s. Now when things happen, said politicians say “Its Dumbledore’s will.” Wars are fought over the followers of
    House Gryffindore versus the followers of House Slytherin. People die for their faith in the books.
    People regularly forsake medicine for magic. And whomever declares themselves a wizard and gets a wizard liscence is granted societal respect. They ask for donations for the further promotion of magic and get them. Billions of dollars worth.

    When you tell them “it is just well written fiction” people snort about you being just a muggle, and some even declare you a dark wizard posing as a muggle. You even get slightly discriminated against, and find it hard to find a mate who doesn’t think the books are real.
    Now…imagine this going on for decades.
    Would you hate the followers of the Harry Potter books? Make fun of them?
    Of course you would.

18. 40 Year Old Atheist on April 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am

    Doug,

    That’s a fantastic analogy and comment. Thanks!

19. Kadlekins on April 28th, 2009 at 2:26 am

    Good post, and undeniably true. I’m probably an outlier in this situation, because I am an angry Atheist. Obviously I’m not angry at God, because it doesn’t exist, but I am very very angry at his followers. Some of them anyway. The ones that seem to have it crammed in their head that I need “saving” and the only way to save me is to come to my door and give me pamphlets about how if I don’t agree with them, I’m doomed to spend eternity in hellfire. I’m afraid to tell my extended family about my Athiesm because they’re all devout, and I’m pretty sure they’d just forget I exist if I told them.

    I’m angry that I’ll never be able to be elected into any political office in America because I don’t believe in God.

    I’m angry that Christians will constantly judge me and look down their noses at me because of my choices.

    I’m angry that I’m considered inferior in American society.

    I’m angry that religion continuously attacks science, and even angrier that people actually agree with religion over the facts and evidence science produces.

    I’m angry that no matter what I do or say, religious people will never listen to me because their “feelings” make more sense then reason and fact.

    I’m angry that challenging and questioning someone’s religion is considered rude or politically incorrect, yet no one bats an eye if someone criticizes Atheism or science.

    I’m angry that children are being indoctrinated and brainwashed into their parent’s religion without a choice in the matter.

    I’m angry that gays aren’t given their constitutional rights because our country and government is overrun with religious bigots.

    I’m angry at the horrifying amount of guilt people live with on a daily basis because of their living choices, brought on by religious superstition and the desire to please their God.

    But most of all, I’m angry that I live in a world where it’s normal for people to believe that a virgin gave birth, a man rose from death, and that there’s an invisible camera in the sky that watches and knows everything, and if you don’t do what it wants, it sends you to burn in hell forever.

    …Wait, unicorns don’t exist?

20. Kadlekins on April 28th, 2009 at 2:29 am

    Oops, I meant probably not an outlier** haha, I know I’m not alone with my anger =P.

21. Jaybird632 on July 30th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

    “All this to say I’m not mad at god. I have the same opinion of god that I have of unicorns.”
     
    Really?  Have you started a blog to claim unicorns don’t exist?

22. 40yearoldatheist on August 4th, 2009 at 9:47 am

    @Jaybird632: No, but unicorn religions don’t influence virtually every aspect of our society either. When they do, I’ll begin a blog about that too.