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Downvoted? I thought atheism was A Good Thing with the HN hive mind.
I imagine you got downvoted because this thread is neither about Chesterton nor about atheism. HN culture is generally not very tolerant of threads that deviate into things that aren't at least tangentially related to the main topic-at-hand.
I'm not totally sure what you mean.
I would not expect an atheist to consider themselves "God forsaken", and I would not be surprised if one was kind of offended by being called that.
(I myself am not an atheist, ftr)
Given that,I am not sure why you would be surprised that people reacted negatively?
Because so many on HN are so proud of their atheism. I'm not a conventional believer either. But my description happened to be factual, not an insult.