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Saturday, January 9, 2016

Ridicule of religious belief and evangelist atheism

I never heard the expression "evangelist atheist" before, although I guess you mean people out to spread the gospel of atheism. There are "hard atheists" who assert affirmatively that there is no God (generally based on philosophical reasoning rather than any empirical evidence) and there are "soft atheists" who just say there is no evidence of God and so there is no need to believe.(Agnosticism is something different -- the assertion that knowledge of something like God is not possible).

I think someone who is "evangelistic" (pushy) about their atheism is probably someone who fears religion and superstition, probably based on both personal experience and the study of the history of the behavior of religions. After that it becomes a matter of personality and maturity -- some use ridicule and sarcasm, others try to reason with the believer (good luck with either approach -- sarcasm merely reinforces the martyrdom complex and reason is generally not possible once the person reaches a certain age). The believer after a certain point has heard it all before and has his or her rationalizations all carefully in place.

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