Dealing with Death as an Atheist

[henryp]

Yes.  I would characterize your description of the Theist thinking in that thread as an absurd caricature.  Theists I'd say nearly unanimously don't involve God in their street crossing.  And the vast majority don't go to the doctors "Just in case." 

Maybe someone with a severe mental illness,  or maybe one of those snake handler type people might, I guess.  But Theists look both ways before they cross the street so they don't get hit by a car.  That's it.  Anything else you are trying to project onto the thinking is about you, not reality.

There are a lot of theists out there who absolutely thank Jesus for everything from finding their car keys to surviving another day on the planet.  These are most ultra-fundamentalist types and, of course, a small minority of the total theist population.  However, the idea that theists are actually thinking about their beliefs, that's another thing entirely.  You cannot come to a belief in any god by wholly rational means, you cannot think your way into it because there is no rational reason to believe that gods exist in the first place.  Therefore, depending on how you define "thinking", I'd argue that, with regard to their beliefs, lots of theists have never thought about them at all.

There are definitely rational reasons to believe in God.  The key is the belief in a number of false premises.  Premises that we are often inclined to assume to be true due to sociological and biological influences.   But that IS another story.

And thanking Jesus is akin to being thankful you had good luck.  Hell, I still say thank god when I find my keys.   Not because I believe in some deity, but because the meaning is "I'm relieved things worked out."  The only difference is that theists believe that 'chance' has varying degrees of order, while most Atheists just think it is pure chance.