Yeah people get nasty about it without any concern whether it makes them look like exactly the kind of dogmatic zealots they think they are fighting against. I am not religious in any way, but I always found it funny how certain vocal athiests will insist only fools would choose to believe in something they cannot see, and claim they know there is no god or anything beyond the natural world they see, because nobody can possibly prove otherwise, while also being unable or unwilling to stand their ground in any philosophical conversations about the nature of our senses and perceptions, or of reality or consciousness itself.

I am of the opinion that such absolute certainty in something fundamentally unknowable represents a form of faith and belief no more valid or less valid than any religious belief. I’ll also assert there’s absolutely nothing wrong with holding such a belief, it’s even a belief I personally share, but you if you are being intellectually honest you need to admit it is a belief, based on no particular conclusive facts. It’s a belief in a thing that is beyond the reach of any kind of evidence that might be found in our present context, not an automatic default position everyone must assume unless proven otherwise. It’s as much of an assumption as anything else. I fail to see why anyone wouldn’t consider agnosticism is not a more “natural” default position than athiesm.

If on the other hand they want athiesm to be a religion itself, where potentially unwilling people are told what (not) to believe by people of authority who have written impressive and stern books about it which must not be questioned whether they provide any actually reliable evidence that it is so, instead of just letting people see the (lack of) potential evidence and then make up their own minds to believe whatever they want to believe, then I would be pleased to welcome the Church of Evangelical Athiesm to the already rich and extensive tapestry of various religious organizations convincing themselves they’re trying to do good in the world.

Beliefs are a choice. You can pick and choose. Most reasonable people, including “athiests” and “Christians” do that already, and I think this is the point that many militant athiests refuse to understand. They immediately assume the worst of every “Christian” based on a predetermined idea of what they believe without ever asking. That’s yet another form of belief.

You can still believe in a “Christian God” when you understand that the organization of the Church is a system created by humans and the Bible is a book written and interpreted and translated by humans. The whole point of belief is that you still get to believe what you want, and you don’t have to believe what you don’t want. It’s not a monolith, even if the Church tells you it is. It’s personal, and other people don’t get to decide whether a person gets to call themselves a Christian or not. Other Christians might decide you’re not. They might disagree. But there’s nothing in particular that makes them any more right about that, than they are about stoning gays.

I recommend athiests and Christians alike judge people by their beliefs, actions and attitudes, and how much those align with your own, not by whether they call themselves athiests or Christian or not. Sorry, I know it’s so much more convenient to just judge people by a label. Simple, easy, clean. But you have to look deeper than that, life not a simple thing, and if you think it is, you’re probably oversimplifying it.