I’ve been lurking around/in the religious newsgroups, for a couple
of hours most days, for the past six months, and seem to have
witnessed more anger in the alt.atheism (non-moderated) groups
than in all the others combined…
Several recent posters on alt.atheism.moderated have also
commented on the apparently increasing ‘noise’ (immaturity-plus-
anger-plus-profanity?) there.
Now why?
As a counselor of angry people I try to encourage my clients to
figure out the cause/s of their anger –
- biology (sometimes anger is linked to allergies, diet, etc.),
- perceived injustice,
- personal frustration,
- threat/hurt, or
- is it a learned behavior (studies show that most very angry teenagers
had at least one very angry parent)?
In the late 1960s – the Vietnam protest years – I was a counselor-
of-students. My judgment was (and is) that most overt protesters -
about/against anything – are angry about something much deeper
than the presenting issue. As one said to me, after an ‘aha
experience’: ‘I think I’m just generally mad at authority figures
‘cos I wasn’t breast-fed or bonded properly to my mother…!’
Now, back to angry atheists or theists. Here’s my thesis: most
angry theists are fundamentalists, who use as psychological
weapons doctrines such as hell and judgment to try to ‘validate’
their anger. Most angry atheists probably felt victimized at some
time by ‘turn or burn’ preachers…
BTW I reckon there’s more anger experienced by Americans – both
theistic fundamentalists and atheists – than in the rest of the
world combined. Why is that?
Now there’s something puzzling here: I would have thought
alt.atheism group/s were supposed to be seed-beds of
rationality…
Rowland Croucher