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... and you just described such case, so what are you expecting here?
Let me quote to you bits of Hollywood Atheist, then:
- Atheists show contempt, dislike, or even hatred towards religion and gods, which may become contradictory to the point of them seeming to be Nay Theists instead. They may not just argue against theism, but may actively mock, harass, and even persecute believers, sometimes in ways ironically reminiscent of religious extremism.
- Atheists are smugly convinced of their own intellectual superiority and usually blinded to the "truth" by their own elitist pretensions. Even whenever the medium doesn't take a position, these traits are often used to show atheists as being similar to their religious opponents, especially the more fanatical ones.
- Atheists only seem to have a bone to pick against their culture's predominant religion. In the real world this is most often Christianity, and to a lesser extent, its brethren Judaism and Islam, called Abrahamic religions. This does sometimes happen in real life, on the basis that people tend to be more critical with the religions they are most directly familiar with or knowledgeable about, especially if they have personally experienced their social and political ramifications,note but its portrayal in media often conflates atheism with criticism of religion, which are related but ultimately different fields.note
- Atheists are hardline materialists and/or have an overtly pseudo-religious belief in science and logic (which is scientism
, not atheism). They might even be technophiles, transhumanists and/or roboticists as well, effectively having that as their religion. Under the right conditions of power and superiority, they might consider and/or proclaim themselves God(s), often fully meaning it.
.
And what you are postulating is a strawman character, fighting in The War on Straw
Edited by TropiarzThere is a fictional example that isn't a strawman in Father Brown, based on a very strong anticlerical movement in French government at the time.
The Fundamentalist can apply to atheists as much as anyone else when they start down the path of unshakable conviction, actively trying to force their beliefs on others, and actively seeking the destruction of other worldviews, Demonization of those who disagree, etc.
Nthing Hollywood Atheist (aka Straw Atheist) as the general trope here, though. Poe's Law is in full effect when it comes to the extremes some take their non-beliefs to, so the straw part is mostly in representing these as representatives rather than outliers.
Edited by Scorpion451Yeah, Hollywood Atheist does cover a lot of cases of this situation now that I've looked it over again. I was viewing it more through the lens of "atheism being depicted as a silly attitude, usually by strawmanning it".

Do we have a trope that covers characters who have a zealous and passionate hatred of religion
and want the very concept of religion to be completely and utterly eradicated? I'm talking a level of hostility towards religion well beyond what's covered by Belief Makes You Stupid (which itself tends to be an attitude taken by a work as a whole rather than by any characters in particular); Hollywood Atheist is close, but that covers characters who are just non-religious to a silly and/or strawmannish degree that makes religious characters uncomfortable and/or exasperated without necessarily implying that the Hollywood Atheist wants everyone else to have the same attitude toward religion that they themselves do. Nay-Theist and Flat-Earth Atheist don't quite cover it, either, since those are framed in a way that they are or can be more about skepticism
(even in a setting where actual
skepticism
would entail accepting the existence of god(s), since they can be and have been proven to exist) than outright hostility against religion. And Rage Against the Heavens is very close (especially when it comes from the belief that God Is Evil and needs to be punished and/or overthrown), but that directs the hostility towards the god(s) of the setting rather than people who follow a religion. So what I'm looking for is essentially the "Reddit atheist
" stereotype or the atheist equivalent of The Fundamentalist.
Edited by Bomber-Boi