Evangelical Atheism Makes you a Paranoid Sucker

P.Z. Myers appears to be ready to believe anything. He believes the US is on the verge of becoming a theocratic fascist dictatorship. And he believes Agora to be sound history, hook, line and sinker. Which, of course, means his disciples and herd of Independent Rational Minds in the comboxes will believe exactly the same thing.

Meanwhile, an atheist who actually seems to use his intellect instead of merely worshipping it has done the heavy lifting of actually learning about the historical claims of Agora. Shorter take: it’s a film made to confirm religion haters in their prejudices, not to impart actual information about what occurred.

Myers is *the* poster boy for this quote:

“I feel quite certain that a less emotional and less evangelistic atheism would garner far more influence. Atheism has a brand problem. Lots of the people who do not believe in God refuse to call themselves atheists. Why? Because they don’t want to be associated with proselytizers,” – Stephen Prothero, Killing The Buddha

Atheism is unnatural for human beings. That’s why it’s always way out at the end of the bell curve. A really rigorous and thorough-going atheism requires some kind of mania or rage or injury to keep it going. Most people don’t have the energy to do that. So the average room temperature posture of the human person is a sort of pagan reverence for the Unknown and the tendency to recognize that there is something spiritual behind the world. You can suppress that by sheer dint of will if you belong to the tiny percentage of people who can sustain raging Evangelical Atheism over a life time. But it will never catch on.

Alternatively, you can follow the thread of revelation that begins with the observation that creation points to a Creator and make a lot of missteps (arriving at any of the religions of man) or (under grace0 come eventually to faith in God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But mere blank denial of God requires more effort than normal people are willing to make. Even most atheists (so-called) don’t make it. A recent poll showed that 21% of self-described atheists elsewhere said they believed in God.

Remember: these people are you masters in terms of clear and rational thought.

Or it could be that Evangelical Atheism is indeed the manifestation of a particular sort of personality disorder that just doesn’t know how to process normal human emotional and affective interactions like the majority of the population. Boasting constantly about one’s superior rational abilities (while failing to manifest such superior abilities) would be an understandable coping mechanism in such a situation. It certainly covers the data.