Silly question, right? U.S. Atheists might scoff and say God (meaning the Christian God in this context, for American atheists generally don't think further than that) never existed in the first place so the question is moot—and yet I daresay it's atheists who tend not to think about the logical implications of their own statements. If God never existed then why do so many human beings feel as if God exists? Atheists tend not to understand that Christian faith isn't merely an outrageous assertion shouted out in defiance of the void. Christians (some of them anyway) believe that they have empirical evidence of their faith: they think they've seen faith rewarded, and therefore have more reason to believe. There may be irreligious reasons for this but no atheist I've run into seems very interested in them, not in any serious or analytical way. Rationalbro discourse on religious belief is mired in pseudoscientific chatter about evopsych and "memetics"; the attitude prevails that because religion isn't "real" (even though plainly it is, even if gods aren't) there's no point in talking accurately about it.
There must exist some physical entity that is equivalent to "God", not as an omniscient and omnipotent creator of everything, but as a thing that motivates belief. Even if God is merely a thought, thoughts ought to be explainable in material and physical terms, for thoughts are hosted on physical beings. If God is a "meme" then what is a meme, exactly? Every scrap of writing I've ever seen on memetics takes zero interest in the underlying mechanics of memetic existence. They take "meme" on Dawkins's authority, I would guess, and therefore feel safe in speculative blithering about psychological and social implications (in spite of their profound ignorance of both psychology and sociology.) What is it, exactly, that compels the human phenomenon known as belief on faith—belief without visible reason?
"It's irrational, it's not important," seems to be the general answer offered by U.S. intellectuals. American (and "Western") authorities have plunged down a deep rabbit hole—one that, ironically, C. S. Lewis predicted would happen in his monograph The Abolition of Man, and wrote into a fictional novel called That Hideous Strength. Science and academia, Lewis feared, in search of perfect "objectivity", would discard the idea that human emotions were meaningful, and thus discard morality and ethics as well. If pain itself is meaningless then there's no objection to hurting people as long as inflicting pain can be construed as "rational" and "objective". And this is indeed what has happened. Jack Lewis, on this point anyway, was entirely correct.
Long story short, there's been—at least in those levels of U.S. academia which gain access to the popular press and prestige—no serious inquiry into what "God" is, not as a spiritual or metaphysical entity but as a human phenomenon. Needless to say, the fanatical and hypocritical Christians scattered throughout American professional life have probably been knocking everyone away from studying this, for their own safety: their "faith" is not one that withstands scrutiny of any sort, much less intellectual analysis, so they've been methodically spoiling and spreading chaos through intellectual disciplines that they wish to regard as theirs for protective reasons: psychology and psychiatry especially, but also philosophy, evolutionary biology, history, and many others.
Obviously belief in the Christian God is not wholly dead but I sense that there's a massive collapse in general Christian faith incoming. Christianity in general, as a source of public influence and political pressure at least, has been shrivelling up for the last several decades, if not the last few centuries, though lately the process seems to be considerably accelerated. (Acceleration is intrinsically good, as we know. /s) The 1960s and 1970s led to a definite recrystallization of U.S. Christianity around purely secular values, especially anti-Black bigotry and other such collective hatreds. The U.S. media, conditioned into reflexive deference to Christians, have refused to put two and two together when it comes to the obviously political and secular nature of the Christians who dominate Republican politics, maybe because deep down the U.S. media doesn't want to accept the profound implication, i.e. that a huge mass of purported Christians, people with an extraordinary amount of power in the United States, has in fact lost their faith and won't publicly admit it. To them, I suspect, God is dead, though they're in denial about it.
~Chara of Pnictogen
