Why are atheists against religion?

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/ath/blathq_rel_against.htm


Question:
Why are atheists against religion?



Response:
Atheists in the West often don't have very positive feelings when it comes to religion. The reasons for this are manifold, but most have to do either with the role religion played in their families or the use of it by others to berate and evangelize to them today. As a consequence, individual atheists are quite often at least irreligious if not also anti-religious.

That is not, however, necessarily true of all atheists. Some have relatively neutral feelings towards religion, some have relatively positive feelings towards religion, and some are even quite religious themselves. There is a wide variety of opinions about religion among atheists; nevertheless, those who are in some way against religion do outnumber those who are supportive of religion - at least among atheists in the West.

So if being an atheist doesn't automatically mean being against religion, why do so many atheists attack religion? There are probably as many different answers to this question as there are to the question of why some theists attack religion. The fact of the matter is, religion has not been an unmitigated good through history. Quite a lot of the suffering, destruction, and death humanity has experienced can be traced back to religious beliefs, religious attitudes, and religious power.

This is not to say that there has never been anything good about religion - it also hasn't been an unmitigated evil, either. Nevertheless, there are many historical, cultural, and philosophical reasons which can justify criticizing religion. We can add to that any number of personal reasons why an individual, whether atheist or theist, would criticize religion - bad religious experiences when growing up, bad religious experiences currently, and a sense of unease over the involvement of religion in problems going on today.

It must be remembered that some atheists come from a Christian background where they were discouraged from doubting and questioning. Once they started, however, the found that they had been deceived and lied to by religious leaders; this can result in a lingering resentment and even hatred of the religious beliefs and power structures which allowed such deception to occur and allows it to continue.

Some continue to suffer from discrimination and abuse from family, friends and colleagues. They often feel unable to even reveal that they are atheists for fear of reprisals and ostracism. In such a situation, it simply isn't possible to expect a person to have warm, fuzzy feelings about a religion which is used, from their perspective, to foster hatred and repression towards them simply because they are unable to adopt that religion. In such an atmosphere, it is possible for bigotry to develop - and so, yes, it is surely true that some atheists are bigoted towards Christians and Christianity.

You can't assume that an atheist is opposed to all religion or that a theist is in favor of all religion. Such correlations may indeed be common, but there are too many out there who don't fit that pattern to justify gross generalizations and hasty assumptions. If you want to know what a person thinks about religion and religious beliefs, you simply have to ask them, and you have to consider their response for what it actually says instead of imposing preconceptions you may have developed over time.