This blog post reprints an article by a Christian philosopher that comes up with all kinds of strange reasons that people become atheists, including inattentive fathers:
http://onlyamustardseed.blogspot.com/2010/04/atheism-philospher-explores-causes.html
Perhaps theories about why people behave in certain ways should be left to behavioral scientists and other people qualified to address such matters.
The interesting part about the article for me, though, was its premise that atheists make a conscious choice to deny God. This is a common misunderstanding among Christians, and it hinges on the implications of the word "deny." That word implies that atheists know that the Christian God exists and are pretending he does not. I suppose this might be understandable if you look at atheists through a Christian lens, but it is a mis-characterization of how atheists see that issue. For an atheist, God has no existence to deny. In my response, to the blog post, I ask the author why she denies the Tooth Fairy. It's a tongue-in-cheek question, but the point is that if one does not think something is real, then the word "deny" is misleading.
Note that the article's author argues that we all know God exists because he revealed himself in the Bible. My response would be that the ancient Greek pantheon revealed themselves in the works of Homer. Why does the author deny them?
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