(July 22, 2019 at 2:03 pm)comet Wrote: I think some atheist do treat atheism like a faith. deny anything and everything based on how a theist may use it is a blind faith.
most atheist don't do that but there is a large portion that follow that belief so literally it can almost be considered dogma when looking at them.
Most atheists are deconverts, and particularly if they're fresh deconverts, and young, they tend to present as a sort of anti-faith where the emphasis is on opposition to their faith of origin rather than on the lack of good reason to believe -- which they would have in common with a deconvert from any other religion or indeed with someone who never believed.
It is quite a blow to the ego to let go of something you're so heavily invested in for so long, and so easy to downplay or ignore your own role in being deceived. It's easier to portray yourself as a victim and the religion you left as the villain. The real world is rather more complicated.
None of this should be taken as minimizing the actual and very real harms of some forms of religion, particularly on vulnerable people. Nor is it intended to suggest there's no basis for actively opposing at least some forms of religion. My point is merely that I played a role too ... or I'd have left far sooner than I did. Also, my identity is no longer derived from being a former evangelical, it is derived from being a present rationalist. And my process wasn't so much deconverting from a particular religion as it was becoming committed to what's real rather than what's dogmatically asserted. If I had failed to embrace reality I would have likely just fallen into some different religion.
