Don't you think hate is too strong a word for a fictional character? There's a thin line between love and hate and most of the people I've known who hate God were once believers who felt that God had wronged them in some way. People who really truly hate God take Him way too seriously and or had way too much faith in Him and got burned. They may profess to no longer believe but subconsiously they're still co-dependant on their imaginary friend in the sky. Once you let go of God you let go of the emnity too.
I would say it depends on the context in which the word is being used. "Hate" is not really a strong word at all. Not necessarily, at any rate. Heck, it's probably one of the milder words in our language that describes that emotion. Maybe "rancor" would be too a strong word.
But my point is largely about suspension of disbelief. When I'm reading, say, Tony Shillitoe's Ashuak Chronicles (subtle plug for one of my countrymen
), and I read a scene where a particularly unsavoury military governor named Hu Jaga sets about publicly torturing a group of slaves for some petty reason. "Hate" is an accurate description of the emotion that reading that scene evokes.
Let's try something a little closer to the topic. When I read the Old Testament and God performs or orders the genocide of X group of people, at that moment, "hate" is the emotion that that scene evokes for me. Of course, as I said earlier, the character is too shallow for me to hold onto this when I cease reading and resume my disbelief as I would with more interesting and well-developed villains, but it is there for that moment all the same.
And I agree with you, people who profess disbelief but still passionately hate God as if he were a real person are not really atheists at all (or at least, claim the label "atheist" for what I would consider the wrong reasons). But it is the "as if he were a real person" part that I would take issue with, not the "hate God" part.
Thinking about it, though, I have to admit that the emotional mind does not always follow the rational right away. I do think it is possible for a person to intellectually acknowledge that God is not real and understand the implications, but still not be able to break emotional attachments. Perhaps this is true for people who have only recently given up theism from a very religious background. Though in these cases, where the person was "burned" by religion, maybe God is a symbol for the earthly religious organisation rather than an entity unto himself. But I have not really been personally "burned" by religion in that fashion, so I'm not the best person to speculate.
Regardless, I think it is entirely possible for a person to hate God in the same way they can a villain in a novel. The difference, I suppose, may be that with most, people can stop suspending their disbelief when they put the book down. That seems to be more difficult with God.
Tiberius said:
Show me a fictional character who is hated as much as Adolf Hitler, or Saddam Hussein.
Emperor Palpatine?
