On Atheism

I'm not entirely sure what Yglesias is getting at here, but it bears repeating that there is no god, and the constant insistence of religionists that those of us who don't require the false comforts of the imperishable self to function and be happy in this one and only world must attest to some possibility that there might in fact be an invisible, omnipresent, extratemporal patriarch of the universe as a gesture of respect is a damned pain in the ass. And make no mistake, when religionists ask that atheists "respect" their faith, that's what they're asking: for an admission of agnosticism. But atheism is the empirically sound position, and every deity from Zeus to Ba'al to Yaweh to Vishnu to Ahura Mazda is a fairy tale. Usually at this point the modern believer's hands go up and out spouts a line about not having to believe in the genocidal, adolescent deity of the Pentatuach or the paranoid, apocalyptic hippy of the New Testament, or the Skittles-colored heavens of the Hindus to accede to the broader possibilities of the spiritual realm. I find this even more exasperating. I'm a pretty regular practitioner of yoga and mindfulness myself, and if you can just clease your mind of the brambles of insupportable belief and accept that experiences of profound understanding and physical rightness don't require external sources in the realms of ghosts and spirits and energies, then you can well appreciate that these feelings are part of our innate capacities to understand just what the hell is going on in your own mind and body if only you pay a little attention.