I have a different understanding of the tendency to project a father figure into the sky who is just like Daddy - powerful, intelligent, observes behavior and judges, rewards and punishes it. Deep in our bones, we were children first. We believed in magic. We believed by faith (uncritically). Our morality was based in seeking reward and avoiding punishment. And we feared Daddy.
But we can mature past that. We can learn to reason and to become autonomous moral agents.
And I would have a similar reaction, but that doesn't define a theist or a magical thinker. It's a gut reaction from the depths of more primal brain centers, but it doesn't lead to action or a god belief, and I would have it if the comment were, "I dare *you* to drown my parents." I just did. I didn't like writing that, but I did, because my neocortex makes the decisions, not my reptilian brain, and it understood that the words do nothing and were useful in making a point.
Theists are often threatened these days by growth of irreligiosity in the West, and like to keep the numbers for such people appear artificially low. It's damaging to them that people see atheism normalizing. It's not that long ago that self-identifying atheists were generally considered to be immoral such that they weren't allowed to adopt, teach, coach, or serve on juries, which helped the church retain its membership, but that's all gone, and atheism is going mainstream in the States and already has in much of Europe and the English-speaking countries around the world, and it seems to me that the effort to diminish the magnitude of this defection by making their numbers appear smaller.
This may motivate the claims that atheists deny the existence of gods, and if you merely don't believe in them, you're not an atheist - you're an agnostic.
Once, if you criticized or defied the church publicly, you could expect a severe backlash. Hence the burning of heretics, inquisitions, and even the Scopes trial. But today, atheism is respectable, various intellectuals have written best sellers on it, atheists are appearing everywhere in the popular culture (Carlan, Maher, Gervais), the church is routinely depicted unfavorably in entertainment media, and so it's organized religion fighting to remain relevant, which includes keeping atheism appearing irrelevant as best it can.
That's fear speaking - not a change in belief. If the atheist prays under duress, it will be for comfort, and will generally begin, "If you're real ... "
I think you have it backward. It's the absence of fear that characterizes atheism. Many simply have no need for a god belief or religion. They've become comfortable with unanswerable questions, with the knowledge that consciousness may be extinguished with death and that there may be no afterlife, that nobody is watching over us or loves us that doesn't live on the surface of the earth, and that each of us can be the measure of what is true and what is good. Once you're there, what does religion or a god belief have to offer?
Last edited:
