Religiously Atheist

A problem that I have with most atheists I come across is that they seem to think that Christianity is the only religion worth talking about.

They form arguments against the existence of God, pick holes in the Bible, and criticise anyone attending Sunday mass. It is very rare to hear anyone talk about why they think reincarnation is nonsense, argue the existence of Shiva, or attempt to point out contradictions in the Pāli Tipitaka.

Of course, the doctrines and teachings of Christianity are easy to pick up if you've lived most of your life in a dominantly Christian country like England or America. It takes much more effort to research a religion that began in another country with a different society. Some branches of Christianity are also more aggressively religious (for want of a better term) than other faiths, and so aggression begets aggression.

Something that has irked me in my conversations with most religious people has been their refusal to entertain any hypothetical situation in which their faith is made up. You say "Imagine God^* does not exist..." and they reply with "But God does exist." It shows either a complete lack of imagination, or a fear of immediately losing one's faith if one imagines, for a moment, that they could be wrong.
^{*Yes, I recognise the irony that I am using the Christian God as an example in this post.}

That kind of self-imposed mental prison is abhorrent, surely. Unfortunately I've experienced the same condition with atheists. You say "Imagine God exists..." and they reply with "But God doesn't exist."

One of my main gripes with religions is that they often instil ignorance and hold people back from independent thought; but what do you do when your fellow non-believers are just as small-minded as the theistic?