Former atheist

[Angrboda]

I'd just like to point out that, having been indoctrinated in a religion prior to becoming an atheist makes it easier to abandon atheism in favor of a return to religion. I think being indoctrinated when you are young likely does change the brain in ways that make seemingly fantastic things more readily credible than for those who have never really believed. Does this imply that the belief in what is seemingly fantastic is less credible? I don't know that it does. It is just a different way of thinking. One could say that the perpetual atheist is unnaturally biased against believing in such things, as much as one could say that the former believer is unnaturally biased toward believing such things. There is no "correct state" for an individual to have.

One would say the perpetual atheist is unbiased. It is the indoctrination that introduces bias.

One could say that, and I think the lion's share of psychological research would indicate that person is wrong — that there is no such thing as an unbiased individual. There is no such thing as a neutral opinion, but that you believe there is might perhaps be a product of your bias. By the time an individual reaches majority, they have already consolidated many opinions and arrived at their own unique biases, perpetual atheist or no.

The rest of your post follows from this belief that the perpetual atheist is in some sense neutral and thereby more rational. Since I dispute this, I dispute that for similar reasons. (To the extent that I, for the sake of argument, accept the hypothesis of rationality as such. I do not. Rationality is a gloss on more elusive movements within the psyche of the individual. To speak of a neutral bias from which an untainted rationality can arrive at some sort of unvarnished truth is to me a vain dream which is simply not supported by the nature of the human mind.)