Why Are Believers Willfully Ignorant About Atheists?

[LeftishBrit]

18. Is what true - that atheists don't experience grief, or that religious people suspect them of not

experiencing grief?

Neither is true, in general. Certainly not the first. Indeed, atheists may have more reason for grief, because they do not believe in an afterlife, so to them their loved ones have gone forever, whereas many religious people (not all; it's certainly not a universal belief for religious Jews, for example) do think that they will see their loved ones again in a future existence.

And most religious people do not accuse atheists of being incapable of feeling grief - if anything, they may say the opposite, that atheists don't have a source of comfort in bereavement, as indicated above. Which may be true to some extent, but you can't believe that something is true when you don't, just because it might be comforting.

Gavin Dunbar, of whom I had not previously heard, seems very condescending. Moreover, he is confusing the intrinsic importance of an individual or an experience, with its cause. Perhaps this is partly semantic: the term 'meaning' can be used in English both to refer to the intrinsic nature and importance of something, and to refer to its explanation. But from the point of view of human experience, love and grief do not depend on why your loved ones exist. They depend on the nature of that existence. There are, after all, few stronger bonds than that of a baby to its parent or caregiver, yet a baby is not yet capable of understanding either a religious or a nonreligious explanation for Mummy's existence.