Angry Atheists

My heart sank a bit today when looking at former minister and friend Dane Eidson's blog, Ranting Lunacy. He seems angry. There just might be stages that formerly brainwashed believers go through who leave the fold, and the first stage is anger. I myself didn't experience that stage, and I still have no anger after learning I was brainwashed into believing. After all, I was brainwashed by the brainwashed and I in turn brainwashed others.

Dane writes:

We love to mock Christian evangelicals. If you complain about this blog's contents being offensive after just reading the above text you're only proving two things about yourself. And these are that you're a hypocrite and that you are an idiot!
Some of the purposes of his blog are:
To point out the hypocrisy of far right fundamentalists.
To mock Christian fundamentalism.
To offer evidence that Christian evangelical fundamentalism is actually a mental illness and delusional thinking.
To report on the latest moral failures of Christian fundamentalist preachers through providing the links to and commenting about the news articles and videos catching these hypocrites in action.
And in one of his posts he wrote:
I openly mock you Christian fundamentalists! I piss on the name of your God.
Don't get me wrong, as I've written previously, I understand Dane's anger, much like there was an understandable African-American rage once blacks began gaining their needed rights in American society, it's just that I wish angry atheists would first calm down before they write much. It plays into the stereotypical view believers have of atheists, and it's not healthy if sustained for a long period of time.

At the same time some anger seems justified. Psychologist Dr. Valerie Tarico has written an excellent piece describing the phenomenon of Atheist Arrogance which equally applies I think to “Angry Atheists.” I wish everyone would read what she wrote. It explains so much of what is underneath the stereotype.