Pat Robertson, and American televangelist, has come out and said some pretty ignorant, hateful things in his time. For example (this one is so ignorant it's actually funny):
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." - 1992 (Wikiquotes).
The frightening part is that to remain on television, he must be earning money and hence some people actually follow this utter dribble he spouts forth, which doesn't bode well for [certain subsets of poorly educated, older, white, American] society.
In recent events, some random psychopath picked up a gun, went into a Sikh temple and shot a bunch of people.
While most people would say (inside the USA) "That guy was possibly influenced by the Batman shootings, and is a random psychopath" (outside USA) "This is more evidence as to why there should be tighter gun control laws in the US", Pat Robertson has gone for the hate and blame game approach. See his dribble on the shooting incident here: http://www.examiner.com/video/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-shooting
“What is it? Is it satanic? Is it some spiritual thing, people who are atheists, they hate God, they hate the expression of God? And they are angry with the world, angry with themselves, angry with society and they take it out on innocent people who are worshiping God.”
In retort, one author put it so beautifully: "For the record, atheists neither love nor hate god, for the simple reason that god does not exist.".
(http://www.examiner.com/article/pat-robertson-blames-atheists-for-sikh-temple-massacre?cid=rss )
I think I love this guy (no, no- not Robertson- the other guy). Blunt, sees it like it is, and recognises a total arsehat when he sees one.
Robertson's diatribe against athiests is clearly ill-informed, and shbows more evidence in support of the theory that extreme conservatives have lower intelligence (
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html).
It could be a matter of not having the educational opportunities, though, so we've been here before, but will say it again. Atheism is not a hatred of a God, deity or theology. It is an absence of belief.
Let's provide some context, and compare it to something he may be able to comprehend:
Compare unicorns to ponies. A child may believe in and love unicorns, or believe in and love ponies. Chances are, though, they have seen, and possibly touched a pony, as it is not a figment of their imagination. When you grow up and learn the difference between real and imaginary, most rational people don't start to hate unicorns or resent anyone who ever led them to believe they might be real.
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