Frequently this sort of animosity is born of fear, often unrecognised and/or unacknowledged, but very real none-the-less.

Questioning one's fundamental beliefs, especially if those beliefs are linked to the concept of eternal life/salvation, requires a degree of courage that tends to be proportional to the fervour with which the belief is held.

I suspect that one would need personal experience of this sort of situation in order even to begin to know how it must feel.

There never was nothing.