Not all irrational science deniers rely on a divine being to explain that which can’t be explained, doesn’t need explained, doesn’t exist, has no evidence to exist, or that they don’t like the scientific explanation for. Some are happy with a force, collective consciousness, or some other nondescript notion derived from some muddled collection of sources like Buddhism, Wicca, and Star Trek’s Borg. They take the form of desists, pantheists, panentheists, and a variety of other pseudo-atheist-theists. They don’t fit in with theists because they don’t believe in a god and they don’t fit in with atheists because they are not skeptics.

I have met a few people like this. It seems that their primary motivations for such a position are that they feel the need for an afterlife of some kind, can’t accept that our minds are just a virtual machine running in a powerful biochemical computer without which would cease to exist, need some magical explanation of love, are ignorant of the science behind evolution, or feel the need of some kind of karmic cosmic justice.

People like this are certainly better than theists. They don’t look to iron age texts for how to live life or run a society. They are very much the live and let live kind of people who are accepting of other races, sexual orientations, and life styles. In many ways they live life like atheists.

In other ways they are almost worse than theists. They look to intuition and emotion for answers rather than empirical evidence. They give Christian and Muslim notions of science denial a higher degree of legitimacy.

Why is it that people with enough critical thinking to abandon the failed concept of the Abrahamic god can’t take that next step and embrace skepticism and reason?