Why are atheists so strident?

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A long time ago I started a topic on this forum with a similar title, only the last word was “religious” and was called a troll for doing so; it seems atheists take offense to the word religious but they are currently arguing over who is more strident. I wish I thought of using that word then, but perhaps it is not too late to correct the mistake and start the discussion all over again.

I can understand the atheists concern about the harm done by organized religion, if fact I share most of them; I also agree that many religious people are deluding themselves and embracing comfortable beliefs simply because they are comfortable. What I have trouble understanding is why so many atheists have so much trouble distinguishing organized religion from personal theology, or why another persons delusions or foolishness should be considered to be more hateful then pitiable.

Eh, personal theology is in part a choice, not a disease, so why pity? Not only that, but it enables the weirdoes in the first place.

Atheists will be tortured in hell for all eternity, therefore they are strident.

Atheists aren't strident. They just point out that stupid thoughts are stupid and people addicted to these silly things have exaggerated emotional reactions and consider direct analysis as aggression.

Only partially right. We also have to drown out the God we suppress as well.

You only hear from the strident ones. The reasonable ones are happy to keep their beliefs to themselves, unless asked for.

That so helps my positive perspective there.....

Because organised religion commonly dictates personal theology, and both are forms of religion.

Because if their delusions happen to be tied to a belief system that (depending upon which faith you're talking about) enables:
family violence
murder
forced marriage
luddism
misattribution of natural disasters
sexism
homophobia
sexual abuse
child abuse
war
etc.
then pity is not powerful enough to ease the cognitive dissonance.

Though I personally do not hate religion, but find it to be mostly fallacious.

When one takes the intellectually lazy alternative in believing in a theistic concept, instead of taking the time to work out real physical solutions to what they are otherwise trying to explain away with their beliefs, they accept falsehoods that become part of their interactions with others. Those falsehoods perpetuate themselves because they are easier for like-lazy minded individuals to grasp.

That is where the children get caught up in it all. Whether you tell your child "there is a god, and he says <blah>" or if the child overhears mommy and daddy saying some likewise illogical fallacy, they tend to accept that as truth, because it was mommy and/or daddy that said it.

That child then grows up believing that tripe, and indoctrinating (intentionally or otherwise) their own child in that same fallacy.

Yes, the child can when reaching adulthood reason it out themselves and find truth, if they themselves are not intellectually lazy... however being raised by intellectually lazy parents, they are that much more likely to be so themselves.
Everything Asmodeus listed is a result of perpetuated fallacies that have not been reasoned out and eliminated from society, solely because of the existence of irrational beliefs to allow our minds to be lazy.

Also one should consider the effect of an artificially created concept of an "absolute" which the users themselves define, so as to justify the perceived right to judge others by.

Laziness is the mother of all invention... And the greatest invention of all time is god. (not religion, which comes a distant second and could not exist without a concept of the divine)

PS... "I don't know" is a true answer.
"God said so" is a cop-out

Exactly.

I think a bit more has to be added... Though what you say is 100% true.

Religion and God have been give a special place "above criticism" for so long, and still receives that place in most minds, especially the believers (which unfortunately outnumber the non-believers). Because of this, two people, equally as strident in their views, one atheist, one theist -- the atheist would be viewed more strident than the theist by the majority of people. In fact any forcefulness behind an atheist view is taken as strident.

It's strange why they care so much. Surely if God isn't real, why must they be so anti-God?

Atheists are so very STRIDENT because theists are such MILITANT over-generalizers.

I don't mean to sound (overly) arrogant, but have you ever googled terms like "anti-theism" and "anti-religion"? There have been books written on why certain atheists are also very anti-theistic. Some of the arguments anti-theistic atheists have given over the years include:

- God and supernatural beings in general are a concept that impoverish our intellectual culture.
- Gods, being indiscernible by any method, are easily exploited by people to backup BS notions (Creationism, the allegation family planning is immoral, the allegation homosexuality is immoral, etc)
- Centralized Religion has been used to back up some of the worst nationalistic regimes in history (in the later part of their tenure, even Communist governments began exploiting religion).
- God encourages teleological thinking - which leads to irrational and harmful superstition.

Whether you agree with the stridently anti-theistic atheist's moral outrage or not, the matter remains that there is a massive body of literature clearly expressing their reasons for opposing theism.

This statement suggests that, unlike most atheists, you are more anti-theist than anti-religious; yet you base your attack on religion, not theism itself. Many of the things Asmodeus listed have been promoted by religion though they have also been known to happen without it. Does it matter if one disapproves of say homosexuality because he thinks his god does or he came to that conclusion by himself? It seems to me to be more practical to refute the idea itself rather than the source of it; indeed, I would think it would be intellectually lazy to attack the source.

We have had some strident Christians here and I agree they can be every bit as annoying as the strident atheists. Theological opinions are (or should be) very personal and it would be nice if they could be kept that way unless another person expresses an interest in learning what they are. I see no point, however, in grouping ourselves into camps to debate the general concept.

I can't say that I was specifically attacking religion there.
I was attacking theology... well specifically the belief in a divine.
The belief in a divine is what the intellectually lazy use to maintain their laziness, so that a rote answer can be formed. "god did it" etc.
I do in other threads attack religion, of course... they're both fair game, because they're so lame.
But in this one, my approach is to attack the results of the belief in a divine. It doesn't matter if it is a group belief or an individual one.

I am though, both anti-theistic, and anti-religious. I could not be the later, were I not the former, at least not to the broad extent that I am.