10 reasons to be afraid of atheists

Here are ten reasons to be afraid of atheists:

1. There are some pretty nasty atheists that even seem dangerous. I don’t know any personally, but I have met some online that I’m glad are at arm’s length.
2. There are some atheists who are just rude and won’t respect but attack your beliefs or rationale, which can make conversing with them very uncomfortable and confrontational.
3. There are some atheists who, because they are atheists, are by your standards going to Hell and are therefore, by your standards, children of the devil, which can make for a rather unsettling meeting.
4. There are some atheists out there who would challenge your beliefs and question your assumptions, even respectfully, which can make for a very difficult conversation.
5. There are some atheists who, just because they are atheists, will make you feel uncomfortable about your own belief system and perhaps even cause you to question it.
6. There are some atheists who are actually good people and because of this will really complicate your tidy categories of who’s in and who’s out.
7. There are some atheists who will respect your rationale but who will not recant on theirs, which will cause a critical cognitive dissonance concerning your own categories.
8. There are some atheists who, because of their quality of intelligence and character, will upset your faith and make you wonder why your God should punish such a person.
9. There are some atheists who actually appreciate and even practice religious rituals but without the attending beliefs commonly associated with them, which will confuse your religious sensitivities and boundaries.
10. There are some atheists who insist that you cannot know with certainty that there is a God and sometimes you actually feel this to be true, making them honest and perhaps even right, which will confound your definition of belief and faith and doubt and how they fit into your ideas about salvation.

I know atheists in every one of the above categories. Heck, sometimes I’m in one of all of them myself.

But other than that there’s really nothing to be afraid of.