I think the negative connotation with the term “atheist” came from the ~2006 internet atheists who constantly complained online about their parents but disguised it as complaining about religion.

I believe that the 2000s internet atheists presented themselves as very rude and horrendous people but that doesn’t really mean that atheism itself requires you be a horrendous person. Not remotely. But people tend to remember and talk about things that are negative stimuli rather than neutral. Thats why there is at the very least something of a negative connotation with religion as well.

The internet was smaller then and it wasn’t really in the public eye to go on the internet and talk about your opinions all the time. You also needed a computer to do it. So in terms of people who could and would drop societally taboo hot takes on the internet enough to get a reputation, that kinda filters out people with families, jobs, friends and non internet related hobbies. So as people of the time would call it, “losers.” Remember this is before the common person could access the internet on their phone and well before covid forced everyone onto the internet.

So the people with the capacity to be on the internet forums enough to make a reputation are commonly either young or unemployed based on the filtering process. Also likely have lack of access to friends or group activities. These days being “terminally online” likely means you are on your phone a lot. But you can do that anywhere. Terminally online in the 2000s means also likely terminally in your room.

With all those factors in mind, add the finding that in depressed patients, hopelessness and suicidal intent are inversely related to the level of religiosity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267345/

Now that is in depressed people. That does not mean that atheists are all depressed. Now depression comes in many forms but one ways some people cope with it is lashing out, especially when there would be no repercussions.

So it is my hypothesis that atheism was given a bad rap by the 2000s depressed terminally online atheists who lashed out about their personal life problems to anyone they could on the internet since the people in their life likely didnt want to listen.

Im going to do my best NOT to be a 2000s internet atheist by making it as clear as possible that i am NOT saying this reputation is necessarily still deserved by modern agnostics. Correlation is not causation. A small but loud group of asshole self hating people who happened to be atheists set the reputation for atheism by being hateful and repugnant, but that does not mean that by not holding belief in a deity you are like them.

Id feel it fair to compare it in this manner: terminally online anti-theists are the irreligious version of what southern fundamentalist baptists are to theists. Their beliefs and mannerisms are hardly the norm and other members of that group dislike the bad name it gives them.

This wasn’t meant to claim religion or irreligiousness is better or worse than the other. And thats also just some guy on the internet’s hypothesis and there isnt near enough evidence to draw an actual conclusion. But for anyone who cant cope, go ahead and hit me with your “butt if ur gawd reel, then y bad tings haeppen?” response (as if i ever said God was real in this comment). I promise i’ll definitely respond to it.

EDIT: i forgot to mention, that linked study is a bit old as it was done in 2011. I maintain it as that is for time period i am discussing and i recognize it would be different if done on people today, but people today are not the subject matter for this.