TP makes some claims for the positive nature of atheism:
The primary benefit of atheism is a skeptical mind and a healthy distrust of “certainties”. The benefits are manifold, from an enhanced ability to discern reality to a much diminished chance of being hoodwinked by “authority”.
Which is nice. Of course, he forgets to mention a few other attributes of atheists such as:
1. Living a shorter life.
2. Being handicapped with regards to pattern recognition. (28 January, New Scientist)
3. Being less evolutionarily fit. (New Scientist)
4. Being unhappier and suffering more physical and mental illnesses.
It is ironic that the Reason which many atheists hold sacred is considered a lower circuit (third) than the Religion circuit (fourth). Neurosomatically speaking, the atheist is actually less evolved than the religious believer, which would explain some of the aforementioned handicaps if you are inclined to such imaginative theories.
RAW addressed the rationalists thusly: “The totally robotized make up the vast horde of the Fundamentalist wing of the Materialist church and other True Believers in the scientific paradigms of 1968, 1958, 1948 or whenever their nervous systems stopped taking new imprints.
These are the people who are perpetually frightened and dismayed by the large portion of human behavior mediated through Circuit II mammalian politics. They think that because this territorial-emotional behavior is not Rational, it should not exist. They accept Darwin as dogma, but are nervous about “Darwinism” (because it accepts mammalian politics as an Evolutionary Strategy that has worked thus far) and are repulsed by the data of ethology, genetics and sociobiology. They don’t like the rest of the human race much, because it is not guided by their favorite circuit, and they are uneasily aware that the rest of the human race does not like them much.
These Rationalist robots are also very uncomfortable with the newer circuits and some of them spend most of their lives writing articles and books devoted to “proving” that the newer circuits do not exist and that all scientists who have recorded the behavior of these newer circuits are liars, fools, bunglers, charlatans or some manner of Damned Heretics.”
I found this quote from Prometheus Rising to be particularly amusing in light of the naked fear demonstrated in the headline of 8 October’s New Scientist: “SPECIAL REPORT FUNDAMENTALISM Descent into the new Dark Ages”, to say nothing of TP’s own angry, irrational rantings in defense of Reason.