Eric’s grandma loves keeping up with her grandchildren’s posts. So when Grandma read that Eric had broken his leg in football, she quickly jumped onto Facebook to let him know that she was praying for him. Much to her dismay, she received the following response:

“You’ll “pray” for him? I guess you can ask your magical sky-fairy for whatever you want; I don’t really care. But if you weren’t so deluded, you know that your twisted god is a fairy tale. Do you really believe in an all-loving old man in the sky who commands all homosexuals to be murdered and who orders all rape victims to marry the men who raped them. Have you even read your “holy” book? Probably not, since if you had ever read the whole Bible you’d already be an atheist. Please don’t pollute Eric’s timeline with any more of your toxic delusions.”

Grandma has just encountered an “angry internet atheist,” also known an “anti-theist”1 or an “internet infidel.” These skeptics have mastered the ideal methods for rational discourse: catchy slogans and internet memes, and they are prepared to use these powerful tools against you without warning. The angry atheist is quite at home on message boards like Reddit and 4chan, but his natural habitat, for whatever reason, seems to be Youtube comments sections. Strangely enough, you rarely see these brave champions of skepticism in everyday life. Something about sunlight and a face to face conversation tends to calm them down.

Now I like angry atheists, because I have a lot in common with them, and I think that the average evangelical Christian has more in common with internet infidels than he does with many mainline protestants, and especially more than with those foggy “I’m spiritual but not religious” types.

But first a quick disclaimer: Yes, this post is making generalizations, and no, not all anti-theists or cultural relativists fall under my descriptions.2 But I’m not going to preface every statement with a “most but not all” qualification, nor will I clutter my sentences with modifiers such as “generally” and “though there are exceptions.” If the descriptions below do not apply to you or your friends, that’s fine! This post is not describing you.

So what sort of things do the anti-theist and Christian have in common? Well I can think of three major points of agreement:

Anti-theists believe that there are right and wrong answers about religion.

Many Christians would be surprised to find that their most controversial beliefs do not concern abortion or homosexuality. Those beliefs are simply the outworking of a far more offensive and more fundamental assumption – the assumption that you can have right and wrong beliefs about religion. You see, for many people, religious and moral beliefs are just forms of cultural expression, like clothing or cuisine. And it doesn’t even make sense to say that your cultural expression is “right,” unless gasp you want to take over another culture like the evil imperialists of the 19th and 20th centuries. What makes the cultural relativist positions even more confusing is that relativists still attack many religious beliefs that they find offensive. They boldly condemn, for example, religious discrimination against sexual minorities. Apparently, even though no one can be right or wrong about religious belief, some people really are wrong about their religious beliefs! It’s confusing, I know.

Now our hero, the angry atheist, will have none of this nonsense. He understands that a statement about reality can either be true or false, but not something mushy in between. So if a Christian says that God exists, that statement is either true or false. As long as we are using our terms consistently, there is no other answer. In logic, this principle is called the “law of the excluded middle.” Furthermore, the internet infidel realizes that a bunch of contradictory religious beliefs can’t all be right! Muslims, for example, do not believe that Jesus died on the cross. Christians do believe that he died on the cross. Someone is wrong! Two contradictory statements cannot both be right. They may both be wrong, but they can’t both be correct. In logic, this principle is called the “law of non-contradiction,” and it forms part of a rational foundation without which all knowledge and communication becomes meaningless.3

“Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.” – Avicenna

Anti-theists understand that the truth about religion matters.

Many cultural relativists think that to even ask the question “is my religion true” is to miss the point. Religion should provide comfort, so rather than ask “is it true?” we ought to ask, “Does it comfort you? Does it help you get through life? Does it make you happy?” If a religion works for you, says the relativist, then why not just believe it? What you believe doesn’t matter as much as how you feel.

Once again, our friend the anti-theist effectively shuts down such silliness. Our feelings often correspond to reality, but our feelings do not create reality. No one reads the label on an aspirin bottle and says “well it doesn’t matter if this bottle has cyanide instead of aspirin, what matters is how good it makes me feel to think I am taking an aspirin.” The truth about what is actually in the bottle matters far more than how you feel about the label.

This principle applies equally to offensive religious beliefs. For example, it really doesn’t matter how I feel about Hell, although I will readily admit that thinking about Hell has never brightened my day. What matters is whether Hell really exists; all the talk about fear of consequences improving our behavior is mere drivel compared to the fearsome possibility that such a horror exists. Similarly, whether the Koran provides comfort is not nearly as important as knowing whether Allah actually is the One true God who demands my submission.

The anti-theist also understands that religious beliefs influence our actions.

Several months ago, I was at a meetup group in which people of various faiths were discussing the consequences of both atheistic and religious belief. At one point, a man stood up and made the following comment: “All this talk about atheism versus religion is fine, but what matters is that these beliefs give people an enormous amount of comfort.” Thankfully we had a rather vociferous atheist in the room ready to do God’s work for me; “Actually I think what matters is that people are throwing gays off of roofs and acid into women’s faces because of these ‘comforting’ beliefs.”

Amen brother. It impossible to neatly separate someone’s beliefs from their behavior. And since it is also impossible to change someone’s beliefs through force, the only hope for changing someone’s mind is to convince them that their belief is not true. Whether or not the angry atheist is good at the “convincing,” he certainly understands the importance of aligning people’s minds to reality through persuasion.

So how should you respond to an angry atheist? Well, don’t get defensive. His passion for truth gives you some common ground! So rather than respond in anger, start by affirming his decision to take these sorts of questions seriously. Complement his perfectly just indignation at Christians and Muslims who abuse others. Give him credit when he makes good points (even if you have to work hard to find some). And be honest when you aren’t certain how to answer a question. Don’t get caught up trying to respond to the endless pile of silly caricatures; instead, listen to him long enough to understand what his most central objections are. Learn to ask clarifying questions like “what do you mean by that?” and “how did you come to that conclusion?”4 Try to handle those one at a time and gently corral him back to the main point when he gets sidetracked. Ideally, this strategy will lead to a more meaningful conversation – one without reference to sky fairies. But who am I kidding? They always bring up sky fairies.

P.S.: For an amazing essay on the importance of truth, read “Man or Rabbit” by C.S. Lewis. Seriously, read the essay; it’s well worth your time.

1 I’m using “anti-theist” in a very narrow sense here; it can be used more broadly to refer to any person (angry or not) who believes religion in general to be particularly harmful.

2 I want to especially clarify that atheists in general are not more angry than religious people. This post concerns a specific subset of atheists – not all atheists.

3 The law of excluded middle states that, for any proposition P, “either P is true or its negation, not-P, is true.” The Law of non-contradiction states that “P cannot be both true and false in the same way and at the same time.” (Craig, W.L., and J.P. Moreland. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003. 132. Print.)

4 For an excellent guide to having meaningful conversations with people of different belief systems, see Greg Koukl’s Tactics.