Q: What’s with all of this animosity between Christians and atheists lately?

Q: What’s with all of this animosity between Christians and atheists lately?

A: Lately? This crap has been going on for (literally) thousands of years. It just wasn’t until the invention of the internet that we finally got to see the theism debate argued across the spectrum. We have intelligent people, idiotic people, atheists, theists, agnostics, people that could give less than a crap, people that think this is the most important debate of all time, liberals, conservatives, anarchists, fascists, and all opinions in between interacting over the issue where they normally sat at home and kept most of their opinions to themselves.

For the most part, the people you read in here are the vocal and opinionated ones. Whether they’re atheists or theists, the opinions you’re most likely to read are those that are the most expressed. And the contention between theists (almost all of whom believe that atheists are idiots) and atheists (almost all of whom believe that theists are idiots) is front-and-center in Yahoo! Answers. The format of this site makes it difficult to have a conversation, so people subvert those restrictions by attempting to spout their opinions instead of answering questions.

Consequently, you get a lot of people that are mostly just responding out of a knee-jerk reaction to a question they’re passionate about. It doesn’t make their argument any more or less valid; it just makes it more obvious because it’s right there on the page for everyone to read. And the fact that everyone reads it makes people think they can argue instead just answer. So the atheists get annoyed with the idiotic theist questions/answers and the theists get annoyed with the arrogant atheist questions/answers.

As long as their faith convinces theists that they are correct, they will assume their arguments to be correct. And as long as their reason convinces atheists that they are correct, they will assume their arguments to be correct. And if both sides “know” they’re right, then the debate is fundamentally doomed to being contentious and hostile. Try not to worry about it. We’ll grow up eventually.