So, we're angry because we don't believe? Is that right, Rabbi Gellman? 
I'm angry because negative stereotypes of non-believers are ten a penny in your country of residence.
I'm angry when I see things like that darned Kirk Cameron film the other day - because young people are being taught that science doesn't matter, only a very unthinking sort of faith. "You don't have to think about it, we've done it for you!"
I'm angry because certain religious people get in a self-righteous huff when you suggest that we should be able to have a real proper look at religion and try to understand it in depth - the dogma, the theology, the psychology, the philosophy - and pose difficult, interesting and challenging questions about the nature of faith, religion and belief. They mutter about it being 'reductionist' when we try to look at religion objectively.
I'm angry because, having being told that I'm a reductionist about the psychology of religious belief, I'm then told by religious believers like Rabbi Gellman that my atheism is solely the result of nasty childhood memories of angry preachers and dramatic losses. If it's reductionist for me to say that your religion is based on fear of an invisible sky-daddy, it's just as bad for you to say that my atheism is based on other similarly reductionist views.
I'm not stupid enough to say that it's simply based on fear of an invisible sky-daddy. It's that, a pinch of lubricating Sophistry from some babbling theologian and some mysterious experience that you haven't taken the time to look in to other explanations for.
Why else am I angry? Because I'm fed up of being told that religion is a necessity for morality, as spiritual warfare wages with us atheists as a rather benign anomaly in an increasingly sick game of religious politics.
Anger by atheists is due to politics and discrimination.
Perhaps I could show the good rabbi how this works.
"No, I don't know that Jews should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots." - George H. W. Bush
Woah! Woah! Woah! Anti-semite! Lunatic!
Oh, wait, sorry.
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots." - George H. W. Bush
That's all better. Any other group but atheists and we'd have to get out of our chairs and do something. Let's see what we shouldn't get angry about:
"Can it be that we, too, are ready to embrace the foul concepts of atheism? Somebody is tampering with America's soul, I leave it to you who that somebody is." - former US Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia
"Under no circumstances would I ever vote for an atheist [for President] because they are terrible [and have] no moral code." - Television presenter, Star Jones.
"[We shouldn't] indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." - 2000 Democratic VP candidate, Joseph Lieberman
"[I find it] impossible [to imagine] that a nation which is grounded in Judaeo-Christian principles would somehow select someone [for President] who would repudiate those principles." - Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
After all that, should we just suppress our anger, lest an almost trollish rabbi write nasty things about us in Newsweek? Fuck no. We should be irate. We should be outside in Downing Street and Pennsylvania Avenue with shotguns until they shut down or privatise the faith schools and the faith-based programmes and listening to all the nutty abstinence-only folks and intelligent design creationists.
Gellman confuses people getting angry about stuff with having some predisposition towards anger. In the process, he is asking atheists to bend over and take whatever abuse comes their way. If they object, they are a spooky, evil, angry atheist!
We're angry about the fact that politicians can so easily brush us off, use the word 'atheist' as the scare word (in the States) and appease religious nutters in clear contravention of things like the First Amendment and any rational understanding of Article 10. As I said above, if you rewrote those sentences above or many other quotes by religious folk to say "Muslim" or "Jew" or "Christian" where they refer to "atheist", everyone would be far angrier than we are.
