Eh. A poorly argued piece. Spending time with the religious poor and struggling isn't an argument for atheism being the provence of intellectual privilege or selfishness. Reading it, the author had a couple disturbing red flags that hinted that he had some pretty bizarre ideas of what atheism is all aboutL Huh. I always thought the perfect candidate for atheism was someone who did not find the various religious dogmas presented to them logical or sound. Atheism via bitterness seems odd, and even an atheist that has never touched a Bible knows that the corporeal world being evil is an essential component of the dogma. That's aside from the perception that it is precisely those who are desperate and in need who are most susceptible to religion (endorsed most by theists themselves, hence the term "foxhole atheist"). The article left me wondering if the author himself was searching desperately for a redemption that led to his softening stance: to this... It seems to me that the author has a guilty conscience, but his sins may be rooted in something besides atheism. But the red flags he threw up surrounding his understanding of what it meant to be an atheist suggests that it is good he has become less militant about it.If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be.
Three years later I did escape my town, eventually receiving a PhD in physics, and then working on Wall Street for 20 years.
Takeesha and the other homeless addicts are brutalized by a system driven by a predatory economic rationalism...
The authors view is also held by Kurt Vonnegut who reached it from a different route. (could be read as an appeal to authority but meant as an example that the same thing can be seen from different vantages)