You probably find a lot of anger because there’s a growing trend (particularly around internet forums) of people that are both afraid and bothered by religious appeal. There was a lot of movement through the sixties toward “religious tolerance,” but this was difficult because religions generally have doctrines and biases. Religious people can’t always go around tolerating everything, mainly because they are religious. They believe in things they must do and must not accept. So “either you stand for something, or you’ll fall for everything” was the next step to the debate. People that have picked the stance of atheism are left to lean more toward “religious intolerance,” the perrogative being that you simply can’t tolerate people not tolerating anything.
I’m agnostic. People often tell me this is another excuse for sitting on the fence. I argue that this is rather an aggressive choice to make as well. Imagine a person standing on a podium yelling to everyone “I don’t know anything. You don’t know anything! Shut up!” That person could probably be considered agnostic.
I think, jjwalters, you have a good point to make about “why shake a fist at heaven, when this ‘heaven’ could simply be in the mirror.”
Reverance is definetely facing more challenge than it had for a while.
I think there are a lot of angry atheists. Even so much anger that we may see a time when armed men patrol streets looking for religious symbols of any kind. I doubt that would become very common. The burden of such enforcement on any economy would seem ridiculous. Nevertheless, people are getting really sick of a two-faced religious appeal.
On one end of the spectrum, religious pacifists (“fanatics” maybe) want to save everyone for their god. On the other end, religious fanatics want to bomb everyone in a country for having that country allow any rival religion to take place.
I think of atheists today as a social buffer, necessary for society to take its next step. A large force to neutralize everything in its path that wants to insist on something that isn’t in the science textbook. When the tidal wave of atheism washes away (as all trends do), religious doctrines will find a kind of careful balance more than a tug-of-war. Kinds of stipulations throughout doctrines saying that they still have to tolerate other things. We’ve not reached the point yet today. For example . . .
Christianity is in support of the bible. In how many passages throughout the bible does a protagonist sully and detest homosexuality? What kind of position do you put homosexuals in, then, if you tell them that you’re Christian?
It’s for reasons like that which people generally want to shake their fist. Maybe not so much to heaven - but to the scriptures and people that have assumed and proclaimed themselves as liaisons to heaven. When people say: “what is god?” I tell them I probably don’t have time to think about it, so it’s a good question. When people tell me they’re more in touch with god, I inch away a little uneasily.
otherwise just read it as friendly debate…