<" Why the atheists? Can't they read the tribe's name?">

This isn't exactly a model of tolerance and open dialogue, Gent. I encourage people of any belief system to post here so long as they are willing to subject their beliefs to scrutiny.

I think part of the reason that some atheists are evangelistic is that we live in a religious culture--I have in mind the good ol' US of A but this applies to most countries. In what is nominally a secular country, our policies are being made in accordance with Christian doctrine. We have fundamentalists at all levels of government, and many of these people are actively working to turn this country into a Christian theocracy. Some Christians are also in a war against science in which they try to supplant dogmas like Intelligent Design held for religious reasons for our best naturalistic theories in science classes, in addition to making prayer in public schools mandatory. I got an email recently urging non-Christians to "just shut up" since they are a minority (apparently mob rule is now the model of good Christian government). Even as an agnostic, it really bothers me when a man with the greatest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction the world has ever seen believes that God speaks to him, and that there is an eminent armageddon coming soon that he could potentially play a part in. Anyone who isn't troubled by this simply does not understand the situation.

These fundies are trying to dissolve the distinction between church and state and take away rights that many of us non-believers take for granted, like secular education, the autonomy of science, the equality of women, abortion, and secular courts, among other things. Given all this, I can see why atheists get pissed off and evangelistic. Unfortunately this means that many of them (i.e. "strong atheists") make asses of themselves and alienate people who might otherwise be willing to listen.

Why the atheists? Can't they read the tribe's name?

I think there are several reasons:

(1) It is more interesting to have a discussion with someone who has a different perspective, but if the perspectives are too different there may be no common ground. From this standpoint atheists and agnostics make perfect debating groups. They share a lot, but are different in many respects.

(2) Most if not all atheists were probably agnostic at some point. If one progresses through a set of ideas and comes to a conclusion, it is natural to go back and reassess your ideas as you grow and learn more in your life; therefore atheists may often be in the process of reassessing any conclusions they have come to and will sometimes wish to reassess both agnostic and even theistic ideas at some point.

(3) Agnostics most likely have considered atheism and therefore are a natural audience that might be interested in atheistic ideas.


">>Why are some atheists so evangelistic in their belief that no god exists?"<<

Most atheists think that belief in God is a hindrance to cultural and scientific progress, so that if we want a better world, a good place to start would be to convince people to live for this world and not a theoretical next world and to make decisions based on what is good for man, rather than for a theoretical God.

Yeah, I've found that many North-American atheists are more than willing to "proselytize" people.
Which should be a very theist (or Christian for that matter) feature.

It doesn't happen here in Italy, we usually get along very well, maybe because we have our very big common problems with our very invasive Catholic church.