"Throwing the baby (atheism) out with the bath water (leftist and nihilistic atheists). “We all seem to need an irrational authority to order us about and if we take away God, wushhh, into the power vacuum rushes the state.”
I can see that here you're using the equivalent of the "Not all women" argument. Not all women are crazy feminist monsters. Not all Muslims are crazy terrorists. And so on. In my opinion, Stefan is not "throwing the baby out with the bath water". That would be using a collectivist way of thinking and anyone who appreciates the conservative values knows better than being a collectivist and favors individualism and meritocracy instead. Stefan here is not saying that he now thinks we should all believe in God! Atheism has become as religious, as intolerant and irrational as a cult and instead of being pro-rationality, pro-freedom and pro-thinking, it's become as totalitarian as all the religions it claimed to be better and superior to. Atheism gained momentum with the expansion of communist ideals even before the Sixties, just like feminism, and together, atheism and communism, have destroyed the values and practices which were holding societies together (family, marriage, parenting, and so on). These were some of the many values that atheism has thrown away with the bath water, just because they were affiliated with religion. And by the way, I think we should stop treating "nihilistic teenagers" like mere victims of leftist teachers and abusive parents. Nowadays, if you tell your kids to turn off the light when they leave the room, you're called abusive and I'm not exaggerating.
Stefan is not sending anybody back to religion: let's stop pretending that atheism is morally superior to religion. Power destroys and corrupts everything and atheism is very powerful: schools and the media are in the hands of leftists (mostly women) who do not promote critical thinking nor freedom of speech. If we care about the future and the "world", we need to see past dogmas (all religions are bad) and try to find the valuable points in everybody's arguments and recognize that atheists can be our "enemies" too, in the moment in which they espouse ideals such as big government, suppression of free thinking and due process, victim culture and irrational, feelings-based politics.
My personal advice is think for yourself. I am an atheist but my ideals coincide with the ones Christians have and for a long time I felt guilty for that, I thought it was impossible to be a conservative and an atheist at the same time. I married early, had kids as soon as our finances allowed us to, I happily serve my husband in any possible way and homeschool my children. I am not religious yet I try to teach my kids to be honorable, hard-working, rational and free.
