To test if you have this condition, please answer the following questions, yes or no:

1 - When driving or riding about, and you see a bumper sticker or sign mentioning God, Jesus, salvation , Allah, Islam or Christ or G-d etc. , do you feel an uncontrollable urge to make a hostile or mocking observation to (fellow) passengers? [If you are only upset about specific religions and their manifestations, then that’s not a “yes”. In that case, you are merely a “—phobe” regarding a specific religion or group.]

2 -- Does the constant hypocrisy of religious people make you feel assured in the proof of their foolishness and error, the same way the constant hypocrisy of idealists or activists you agree with does not?

3 -- When you hear someone use words like God or blessings, or Jesus, or the Quran or the Torah favorably or as a deferential invocation, do your teeth move about, your eyeballs rattle, and strange gurgling sounds emanate from your brain, causing you to have to make a remark, tell them to shut up, seethe in fury, or run and hide?

4 -- When you hear religious preachers asking for money voluntarily from the individuals in their flocks, does this make you feel a moment of cynical triumph ("see, it's all about the money"), the same way you do NOT feel when the causes that you believe in ask for money, and even when those causes seek to get money coercively from taxpayers who may not agree with paying for them?

5 -- Do you feel in some way oppressed or threatened because someone else puts his or her faith in a silly or offensive ancient/medieval text? [Note: if your answer is that you feel oppressed and threatened when such a person infringes your rights based on that text, then that is not a “yes” answer; it must be if the mere belief that bothers you.]

6 -- Do you seriously think a "Darwin fish" or "The Flying Spaghetti Monster" is/are breathtakingly brilliant, over-the-top hilarious, and compellingly insightful satire(s) of the whole concept of religious belief?

7 -- Do you feel all religious faith is decisively refuted any time immigrants in the US Southwest get excited about the possible appearance of a weeping Virgin Mary in an automobile oil stain?

8 -- Do simplistic and/or ridiculous statements like "more people have been killed in the name of religion than any other cause" or “religion is a mental illness” get you all excited, nodding in self-righteous conviction, apparently overlooking concepts, words, and phrases like these:

"nationalism", “communism”, “racism” , “plunder”, "the king", “totalitarianism”, "the emperor", “astrology”, "the empire", “cult of personality”, "retaliation", “naziism”, "our people", “eugenics”, "territorial expansion", “manifest destiny”, "political or social grievances", "gold", "silver" , "class struggle", "progress", "civilization" , “slavery”, “colonialism", “liberty”, “socioeconomic rivalry" , “crimes of passion”, "bigotry", "resource competition", "dynastic opportunity", “substance abuse”, “trade routes”, or just plain “ideology”, “power”, “sadism” and "man, them folks sure do look weird"?

9 --[UPDATE: Added question 9]: Do you use words like "religionists" seriously? {No fair to say I used a self-coinage like "fideophobe" as I know it's silly.}]

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, you are probably a fideophobe.

It may have started with Dr. Dawkins, or an overdose of Mr. Hitchens.

One sees this species often, but not exclusively nor universally, among progressive and Euro/Middleast -lefty types, Randian libertarians, and Menckenite or Nietzschean conservatives. And in certain circles in very “Blue” areas of the USA, and in certain subcultures in “Red” America.

Maybe some bearded or robed guy made you feel dissed or bad for being female or gay or spontaneous or questioning or an infidel or something. Or did something even nastier. Or perhaps some weirdly authoritarian family member or government official distressed you in the name of Faith X or Deity Y.

Well, don’t worry. You see, your individual or cultural experiences, and resentment thereof, can explain the full range of human appetite towards meaning, and explain away whole traditions and common experiences in a nutshell. And don’t worry: Science, that system that still can’t even cure universally reviled skin-surface acne, can nevertheless fully explain and unravel the in-depth and varied subjective yearnings of countless intelligent human beings for truth, meaning, and values over generations in a complex, mysterious, and still ill-fathomed universe.

As a wise young lady recently reminded me: “The only people who take the Bible literally are fundamentalists and atheists”. That’s slightly unfair, I would alter that to “fundamentalists and fideophobes”. Atheists can be quite insightful. Fideophobes are often merely just annoying. Kind of like a lot of fundamentalists.

(And libertarians too, by the way, but you didn't hear that from me.)