Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, has begun a new twice-weekly column at The Washington Post called “The Spirited Atheist.” In today’s piece, she outlines why she believes religion really exists: because as “the most intelligent animals on the planet” we hate to imagine our own extinction.

I see very little difference between the religious believer’s insistence on the existence of an immortal soul and the insistence of some secular philosophers and psychologists on the existence of a consciousness or a mind that is, in some inexplicable way, independent of our physical corpus. I do not consider the fruits of our love and labor—which will outlast our finite existence—less valuable because they depend on functioning neurons and because the neurons that produced them will eventually die. This insistence on an independent consciousness, mind, soul, or spirit is a product of human limitation and human arrogance. Because we are the most intelligent animals on the planet, we can imagine our own extinction. We hate that knowledge—atheists and religious believers alike—so we invent a variety of non-material concepts to explain away the inevitable end of a consciousness that depends entirely on our physical being.

Of course, the Bible offers its own reason for why atheists exist: fallen humans hate to imagine the existence of a holy Creator-God to whom we must give account (cf. Romans 1:18-23).

But Jacoby’s column is a welcome addition to the secular media because it will be dealing in ultimate issues. That the WP is giving Jacoby a platform says less about the popularity of atheism than it does about the “market” for religious discourse. People are hungry for more than politics or the latest gossip coming out of Hollywood. We know there is more to life than the mere material.

In Jacoby’s inaugural column she takes up what she claims are 5 myths about atheism:

  • Myth #1: “New atheism” is actually new.
  • Myth #2: Atheists believe all religious believers are stupid.
  • Myth #3: Atheism is a religion.
  • Myth #4: Atheists believe science explains everything.
  • Myth #5: Atheists deny the existence of “transcendent” experience.

Of course, just because Jacoby calls these propositions “myths” doesn’t make them so. And I wonder if Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens would agree with her?