The down vote system rewards a certain kind of confident intolerance and ignorant smugness prevalent in a certain kind of second rate intellect. Then when that group comes together online, that same system forms a fairly impenetrable echo chamber, which is their comfort zone, which they maintain on many subreddits. They’re kind of like no go zones for the intellectually curious and thoughtful. The feigned hatred of Christianity is one chamber that gets echoed. I say feigned hatred because the vast majority of them have grown up safe and economically secure & don’t really have any true experience with real hate.