Comment by Atheist Exile on June 27, 2011 at 2:02am

God is a meme that defies you to ignore it.  Even solid atheists come here to talk about him.  I don't know if there's a human "need" for God or if people simply can't resist the idea of him.

There's growing evidence that our brains have evolved with a neurological structure for mysticism.  If that's true (and I think it is) then, given the glacial pace of evolutionary change, we can look forward to many centuries or millennia of religious strife.

Another worrying detail is the much higher rates of procreation among the religious.  It seems inevitable that the religious will always outnumber atheists.

Freethought has enjoyed periods of growth (the Enlightenment, the pre-Darwin era in the U.S., modern Europe and the Internet) but freethinkers have never effectively organized to preserve and advance their cause.  Despite the rise of science, the U.S. is overrun with believers; as is most of the rest of the world.  It's truly disheartening.

Atheists are just as infected by the God meme as is everybody else.  The difference is, we analyze him instead of worship him.  Thanks to the Abrahamic religions, the God meme is a serious threat to human peace and progress.  As I'm wont to repeat, the Abrahamic religions have been THE most persistently divisive influence in the history of mankind.  Because of that, I believe atheists should try their best to make the voice of reason heard everywhere.  I think the Internet might be the most valuable tool we have to combat mindless superstition and I hope we use it to advance freethought and deconvert the religious.

Comment by Kristian David Gore on June 27, 2011 at 9:01am

I don't think much about the concept of a god. I don't even know what that really is and don't really care. God almost never came up when I was a kid and I had no clear concept of god until 4th grade and even then I thought it was a silly idea. I Have never been a Theist (See previous blog post) so I think god is not evolved out of a need for the supernatural but instead was invented as a way to explain things that could not be explained. The more we know the less gods have to do.

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