The inquiring mind of an agnostic atheist wanted to know:

So I know most Christians don’t believe this, but… why is it some Christians believe that in order to be an atheist you must hate god?

If you ask an atheist if he hates God, he is likely to laugh at the idea—because to his mind, uncritically conditioned by secular dogma, "God" is an empty abstraction that has no qualitative features about which to feel anything. That is, it’s somewhat difficult to feel anything about an abstract concept. But when you take that empty abstraction and fill it with everything that distinguishes who the living God of Scriptures is, you will then encounter their pronounced hatred for him.

Atheists don’t feel anything about "God," but they do hate God.

Update 10 July 2009: Here is an appropriate and relevant quote I enjoyed from Horatius Bonar in his essay "God’s Will and Man’s Will" (c. 1851) [PDF]: "It is the Gospel that he hates; and the more clearly it is set before him, he hates it the more. It is God that he hates; and the more vividly God is set before him, the more does his enmity awaken and augment. Surely, then, that which stirs up enmity cannot of itself remove it."

 

(This post may be subject to updates.)

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