I work for a church and I can't stand it any more.

[strawdawg]

I've always held the opinion that atheist were like drug addicts, the weakest of the weak. If you want to believe in polytheism then the children of a lesser god.

That sounds a bit like "I always thought that the people who don't believe as I do are flawed in some way." For a very long time, my only impression of atheists was a very short clip on a TV show sometime in the 1970s or very early 80s. It was of a talk show where they would get the guests in three or four seats next to one another. In the clip I saw, an atheist was standing over a theist and shouting "god doesn't exist, and if you're too stupid to understand that, then it's your problem" and stomping off the stage. So for the longest time, atheists to me were very angry and irrational people who used rage to mask their fear of the truth. Religious people, of course, like to feed those perceptions, so until I got to know some actual atheists that is what I believed about them.

It's tempting to put people into groups and categorize groups very narrowly. It's one of the ways that our brains help us to sort through lots of information-- by simplifying some of it to an extreme. It's one of the things that makes it very difficult for societies to overcome certain prejudices. We do it to people of various races, religions, political affiliations, and so on. When we are a part of the group in question, our desire to reject such restrictive labels allows us to view the group more comprehensively. Your view is --as mine was-- a convenience that has a side effect of confirming a bias that is not true for the group.

No, people that don't believe in any God or gods are broken. Like a radio that won't play music, a car that won't start, like a cloud with no rain. Empty, shallow and put themselves in the same class as an animal and assume a lot.