Do Atheists Hate God? Do You Hate Dog?

Here's another claim leveled against atheists - we hate God.

Let's say I am walking through the park and we meet, and we say hi. I ask you what you think of my dog. You tell me you don't see any dog. I counter, no, I am walking my dog. You shake your head and say no, there's no dog here. To that, I assert that the dog is invisible. You then tell me you don't believe I have a dog.

When I then moan, "You hate my dog!", am I making any sense? How can you hate a dog you don't even think exists?

Now, plenty of people hate Barney the Dinosaur or Harry Potter. But you can't actually hate them. They are "real" in the imaginations of a lot of people, but they don't actually exist, like a dog does. What you really hate, or love for that matter, is the idea of Barney or Harry, the fictional universe in which they dwell and their unique place in it, and perhaps in the minds of others who also imagine them to be real. You can't really hate Barney; you can only hate the concept of Barney.

To be fair, the concept of the God of the Bible, as one example, is not very appealing to me. I don't think what's written there about God is particularly flattering. I personally wouldn't like the guy if he was my neighbor. But that's one giant "if".

Because I don't have any motivation or reason to believe this, or any, god is real in any sense outside the imagination of numerous people, I don't have any motivation or reason to hate him or her.

I can't hate your god any more than you can hate the Monster In The Closet your child needs you to check before bed. Closet monsters are a pain in the ass, they are not part of how you wish the growing-up process should be, but there's your kid scared to death of something that you know full well is imaginary, and you have to deal with it.

If you believe your child and agree there might be a monster, you might have reason to hate it. But so long as we do not believe in the imaginary thing which another person is so damn sure exists, we are not capable of hating it.

We can hate that the poor tot can't sleep. We can hate that getting from child to adult has to be so hard. But we cannot hate what we believe is not real.