Book Review – Why Are You Atheists So Angry?

Why Are You Atheists so Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless by Greta Christina – A Review by Rich Honess

The morning of writing this review I picked up my new Kindle e-reader and thought what do I want to read first. I thought of Greta Christina’s book “Why Are You Atheists So Angry” for a number of reasons. Firstly I have watched her YouTube video of a talk of the same title (which has been featured on the Atheism UK website), and I have read her blog the eponymous “Greta Christina’s Blog” which is one of my favourites, and I have wanted this book for a long time, but a hard copy is not yet available in the UK.

I read it in a day!

For me it was one of those books I could not put down. Her YouTube talk was effectively the first chapter of the book which she describes as a “Litany of Anger” about religion which I found totally justified. She also mentions in the second that asking us why we are so angry is an attempt by the religious to ask us to give away our most potent weapon in our fight for societal change.

Not only that she deploys effective arguments criticising not only fundamentalists, but also the moderate believers, progressive believers, new age believers, “spiritual but not religious” believers and ecumenical believers. No-one escapes her ire. But this book is also very constructive for atheists. It offers tips for going out there and doing something, something which Atheism UK also supports.

Moreover it suggests an attitude that is lockstep in line with our aims of advancing atheism and challenging religious belief. It is a great manifesto for those of us that want to see an end to religious belief, but also an end brought about by rational argument.

This is a book I cannot recommend enough, it is almost a Manifesto of my thoughts and feelings on the issue, backed up with justification. Everyone, believers or not, should read this and I hope that the author herself will one day cross the pond to the UK as I think her message should be much more widely delivered!

As an aside the Kindle version and (hopefully soon) this book are/will be available from our online shop located here. Any purchases from our shop help fund our work in combating religious faith so please dip in an make a purchase.