I agree that there is quite a lot of written material available through Atheist Republic that might be referred to as "negative" in one way or another, loads of it actually. I am not going to try to do any statistical estimations of what percentage of this or that that may be read on the site but just clicking randomly in the blog-section and you will quickly run into someone flinging crap on any of the huge number of religious institutions/phenomena. I do not, however, agree that this is something in itself negative but rather a thermometer indicating the amount of frustration the members of our (the atheist) community are and have been building up for a long time. To me AR functions partly as a venting-forum for people who may not have anyone else to rage with about all the stupidity surrounding them. Hence there will be aggression aimed towards one or more perceived infringements on the rights of fellow human beings that theists are so extraordinarily good at performing, in much of what you find on AR.

I also assume that a large portion of the members do keep up with what is happening around the globe and realise that, as the atheist community is growing, we are one of the most despised groups in existence. Along with concepts such as; living on a planet that is not doing so well, religious nuts that are spreading their retardation across almost every continent, famine, resistant bacteria and so on and further, just simply does not make for huge amounts of "feel-good-reading". Of course, when there actually are some good news to report I think it is important to share them but not in order to compensate for all the preceding bad ones. Also striving to include more happy stuff in your texts is not in itself a good thing or a purpose on its own, that must be obvious.

I must admit that I personally dislike the posts about "10 ways to in-your-face a theist" and similar. I do not like the idea of having a tactical approach with rehearsed answers to every conceivable theist argument because it makes me feel like I am doing the same thing they are. If you cannot figure this stuff out yourself then maybe having an argument is a bad idea in the first place. However, this is merely my opinion and I do not condemn anyone for writing or reading such posts. I do understand that they can be useful, that it is very satisfying to read about a religious person having their slim knowledge of their own belief, the world and everything else dragged face first in the gravel, and also that one can learn to adopt a certain argument-model from those blogs.

I would therefore conclude that bitching about religion might actually be very therapeutic for a person surrounded by theists and to some even a necessity. If it would so happen that, say the creationists, where simultaneously struck by the realisation that believing that the planet is between 6000-10000 years old (along with their other ideas) makes every sane person believe you are lacking somewhere between 5 and 15 chromosomes, and therefore decide to disestablish their museum and everything else I would probably cream my jeans while reading but up until then; do not fucking hound for happiness!

- Karl Hansson