Atheism will never fail because atheism is not a thing, it is a lack of a thing.

But let's get this straight. This site is not about atheism per se, it is about rational thinking primarily. We are not advocating blind atheism, we are advocating a rational method which will eventually lead you to the realization that atheism is the position that makes the most sense.

Many atheists have problems with authority figures (or more specifically, with people who think they are the be-all end-all), which is how some of your posts came across.

I'll agree with that slightly. In our rejection of emotionalism, we sometimes also reject emotion. And when we reject emotion, we become blind to the fact that we cannot escape our own human emotions, and that we are in fact influenced by them. So, ironically, some atheists who reject emotion end up ruled by stunted emotions. I am myself recovering from crippling anti-emotion.

This is an oversimplification, and a case of you shooting yourself in the foot.

Atheists are human just like anyone else, and they have their biases and their modes of communication.

In your advocacy of comparative myth, you perhaps miss the most important tactic:

If you want to influence someone, you have to speak their language.

You came in here speaking not the language of us rational responders, but the language of some snooty know-it-all. (You more or less admit it yourself)

My point here is that when we *apply* the ideas of comparative myth for the purposes of influencing people, we should use their myths, their metaphors, their vocabulary.... but use these to teach them *our* concepts.

Before you can attempt this, you pretty much need to spend some time getting a grasp of their language so you can see things from their perspective. And from this perspective, you present a new perspective that will make them think and move more towards your own perspective.

Limbo, you make some interesting points, but you're also rather whiny, obnoxious and condescending. Just talk plainly instead of ending every paragraph with some jabbing indictment and maybe the conversation can begin in earnest.

As am I.  Well said

I accuse many academic atheists of seeing themselves as trans-passionate: that they have trascended our "animal" passions to the higher plain of Reason.  In fact, they very much still are affected by them, to the point that it can get in the way of progress on advancing rational thought [read: atheist movement]

I know for me personally, it had to do with fears and pains from social clashes when I was young. I was a very sensitive kid and took a lot of stuff personally, especially unfair treatment. Eventually I just held it in and turned off my emotions, finding much less painful interest in math, science, and computers.

I was essentially living in fear of feeling my own emotions. But that fear built up over the years, and now it's seriously messing with my life. I finally see the practical need for emotion in a human's life. An unhappy life leads nowhere.

I think there's a possibility of balancing emotions and rationality. I think there are many people on this site who are able to achieve this balance.

But I also think there are many atheists who are in essence afraid of emotion due to past experiences, and who are so strongly biased against emotion that they forget that they too are at the root (literally, of the brain) driven by emotions.

What the fuck was the point here? I'm getting satire and whining and mushrooms and Southpark; and I'm about ready to give up on this. I was under the impression, possibly a mistaken one, that the reason comparative mythology was brought up wasn't to find and distill the 'good' of religion, but to break the last tenuous distinctions our culture holds between historical and practical myths.

That's twice I've come across Joseph Campell.
His book is definately on my list of things to read.