Near death experience of Howard Storm

[Mister Agenda]

I thought atheism just meant you don't believe in God/gods... no "basics" necessary.

That's all it means, you are correct, and thanks for getting that.

The process by which a theist becomes an atheist is always more informative than the mere fact that they've concluded atheism at the end of it. I don't know of a single case that wasn't based on cognitive dissonance, that uncomfortable feeling you get when you can't reconcile what you believe with what you know. My initial push away from Pentecostalism came from reading the Bible cover-to-cover, twice. I wasn't looking for inconsistencies, it was intended as an act of devotion. However, the inconsistencies were stark (particularly to a Pentecostal, they're inerrantists), and the morality was often barbaric. Reading the Bible didn't make me an atheist, that would take about 15 more years, but it cured me of being a Christian. I still believed there was some sort of God, but couldn't believe the Bible was an account of such a being. I had too high an opinion of God to believe the Bible was a result of such a being's efforts.

The Christian Evangelical stereotype of atheists is that we say we're atheists to be cool, or hip, or rebellious; or because we're mad at God, or had a bad experience with Christianity. Kind of similar to the reasons they think gays are homosexual. Believe me, the advantages of being a Christian in the USA are substantial enough not to discard just to be a cool kid. There are good reasons for atheists to be careful about who they are open with about their atheism. It's possible for any of those things to be a catalyst that starts someone on the journey to atheism, but they don't get you to sincere disbelief by themselves.

The ultimate reason that a Muslim or a Christian or whatever becomes an atheist is that they CANNOT believe anymore. They've been convinced that their religion isn't true and that there probably is no God. They can no more choose to believe God is real than they can choose to believe that the moon is really made from green cheese. Not that they can't become convinced God is real again, just that it's not something that can be turned off and on so easily.

Someone who was never a theist is a different matter. These are the atheists most likely to convert. Though many are fine thinkers, if the only reason they are atheists is that they were never taught to be theists and haven't examined their position, then they are more vulnerable to conversion. They don't know why they should be an atheist, so they don't know why they shouldn't be a theist. They may never have heard an argument for or against God until they ran into a proselytizer. But someone like this is highly unlikely to have been the angry at religious people sort, because it requires thinking about religion to get angry about it.

There is certainly a path by which Storm could have been an atheist who converted to Christianity after an NDE with all his self-reporting being honest. But some paths are more likely than others. His path seems less likely than the scenario where he exaggerates an indifference towards or rebellion against religion into atheism, with embellishments added based on commonly held inaccurate stereotypes. What almost all atheists in America have in common is a similar American experience of being an atheist, with some regional variations (I've heard that Oregon and Vermont are comfortable places to be atheists. Where I live, it's likely to result in property damage if too many people know). It's hard to see how someone goes from being the butt of theist stereotypes to a promoter of them.