I don't think I would care about religion and atheism and this whole subject if it weren't for the fact that I was raised as a rabid evangelical Christian. People who complain about us being "edgy atheists" just don't understand what it's like to be raised by people who actually believe the shit. I absolutely have a chip on my shoulder about it.

And I can totally relate to the feeling of most of my peers not caring nearly as much as I do about this. Most people in the west are raised with a pretty innocuous nominal form of religion. Maybe they go to a church for major life events and holidays, but that's it. There's no real belief there. They're not hurt by religion. Religion for most people is just a harmless pastime. It's just some occasional moral instruction that you can take or leave. Most of the people I grew up with were like this. They didn't care about these issues, because they didn't have to. They didn't get mindfucked by real belief.

And I actually envy them. I envy my friends who never really gave a shit about this stuff. They just enjoyed their lives. They didn't waste mental energy on this stuff. Me on the other hand? In my teens and early twenties, I basically thought we were in the last days, and I alienated the friends I had because I thought they were "worldly" people. I've wasted a lot of my best years because of religion. It's no wonder I have such a chip on my shoulder, and care about this stuff. I want to think about it, and refute it, because it hurt me.

People who were never hurt by it will never understand us.