Cause of atheism, Anger at God? (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 27, 2015, 20:29 (3587 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A study finds atheists and agnostics have anger as a cause of their opinion about God. Judging by the way Dawkins rails against religion, it colors his opinions,and perhaps it is true. Certainly religion's description of God can make some folks angry, all powerful, all controlling, etc. Thoughts?-"A new set of studies in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that atheists and agnostics report anger toward God either in the past or anger focused on a hypothetical image of what they imagine God must be like. [...] Those who reported no belief in God reported more grudges toward him than believers.
"At first glance, this finding seemed to reflect an error. How could people be angry with God if they did not believe in God? Reanalyses of a second dataset revealed similar patterns: Those who endorsed their religious beliefs as “atheist/agnostic” or “none/unsure” reported more anger toward God than those who reported a religious affiliation"-https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/study-explores-whether-atheism-is-rooted...-The article goes on: “...the best defense to this phenomena (sic) is for the church not to tell people that God's job is to make them happy.”
“Stop expecting happiness, that is not God's goal for you.”
“Fight for the General!”
“We felt that God was in the right, and sinful humans were in the wrong. And that was enough for us to serve on the right side.”-I'm a bit reluctant to spend valuable time on this kind of thing! First of all, belief in any kind of God is not the default position. Secondly, the kind of God people believe in will depend in the first instance on the environment in which they grew up. Thirdly, if they've been taught that God loves them and wants them to be happy, and through no fault of their own a child dies or there is some other personal tragedy, it's hardly surprising that some of them will question the nature or the existence of God. I would suggest that this is not disbelief through anger at God, as if the victim knew he existed, but disbelief through an awareness that what has been taught appears not to correspond to reality.-As for the author's comments, frankly if God does exist and his goal is not happiness for his creations, and you're supposed to live your life thinking that you must fight for him regardless, and suffering is fine because we're all sinners and deserve to suffer (including the children), it seems to me you'd make better use of your time fighting to alleviate other people's suffering as well as your own. Why bother about God if he's not bothered about you? But if I were a believer, I would accept that it is not God's job to make me happy. That's my own job. So in what way is he relevant to my pursuit of happiness? And if he's irrelevant to my pursuit of happiness, and my pursuit of happiness is irrelevant to him, he might just as well be non-existent.