Do you think people tend to hate things they don't believe exist?

No.

It doesn't. And we don't.

I just had an epiphany: I realize now that you're coming at this from the direction opposite the one I originally thought (confirmed by the questions in your profile). I was thrown off by the start of your second sentence; surely you meant "If not" rather than "If so".

I suppose it's possible that *some* people might hate things that they don't believe in, tho it's a bit hard to wrap my head around. But people in general doing such a thing? No rational person would think that. But the only people I ever observe making such claims are Christians, who are notoriously irrational. (After all, their religion is irrational on its face.)

A contributing factor to many Christians' confusion may be their limited capacity for understanding viewpoints that differ from their own. Perhaps they equate an attack on their belief(s), faith, etc. to an attack on their god (as if we could hurt him!), then (unable to do otherwise) project that equivalence back onto the atheist. And surely, if the atheist is attacking God, he must hate him, right?

[I expect my frankness will offend some people; that is not my intention, tho neither is it any great concern of mine. I'm simply stating the facts (and a bit of speculation) as I see them. In all honesty, since I learned the basic Christian doctrine over 30 years ago, I have never ceased to be amazed that any nominally sane person believes it. The only (partial) explanation that suggests itself is that many millions of people are more irrational than I can imagine.]

There's a difference between hatred and apathy. Atheists are simply rejecting the idea of a creator because they've never seen proof of it... which is pretty reasonable.

Think about it like this: If the whole world believed that there was an invisible teacup floating over your head at all times, just because an ancient book said so, you probably wouldn't take their word for it. You'd reject the idea, but you wouldn't be mad about it... unless those Teacup Believers were, say, oppressive and confrontational against the non-believers! (That might be your problem right there)

No, it doesn't make sense. THe people who make this confusion

a. Do it on purpose to troll. Or

b. They hear "I hated God and then refound my faith!" stories of people who clearly say they believed in the god all along, but they hated it and rebelled.

Well, a lot of religionists seem to hate this satan character (as well as demons) even though 'he' is 100% fictional. I can't think of other examples. I'm completely indifferent to all the gods ever invented.

From what I've seen, people tend to hate people for believing in things they don't believe in themselves.

Nonsense. I don't believe in aliens and I don't hate them. Why would I hate anything that,according to me,doesn't exis. It should be the same for everyone.

They hate the concept of it

That was always common sense, if your trying to prove something wrong. You have to hate it.

The concept of it is what they despise

that's irrational but a small group does

I HATE you, you STUPID unicorn. I wish you were DEAD. I want to hurt you, you dumb unicorn.

You didn't have to type that many words to make that into an

oxymoron. Read that, WTF are you saying?