David Eller talks from a point of view which he calls ‘natural atheism’, which means he was born an atheist, I guess to an atheist family. The book talks mostly about philosophical and social reasons to be an atheist.
Atheism is extremely necessary. The issue with atheism is that when people are less learnt, they feel inferior. Religion makes them feel superior by being proud of their problems called as virtues. So, as most people in social order are dumb, they choose religion and deny reality.
I’m an atheist (7 on Dawkins scale). I’d love it if a solution to this problem is found. I typically recommend people “The Magic of Reality” by Richard Dawkins.
Though David Eller doesn’t try to justify Atheism with biological and scientifical arguments, it’s still a thing. Atheists do talk about how atheism is superior. My problem with atheism is that it sees nowadays science (in a Popper kind of way) as the ultimate solution to everything. Even though science fails to explain a lot of phenomena, and consequently discards them as possible study. I think the contrary, I think the weird should be thoroughly studied with an open mind to possible error, not just to close holes with modern science. You can look up the cases of the man whose heart doesn’t beat, or the man that lives with a tiny portion of his brain.
I’m a physicist. Quantum Electrodynamics explains the motions of electrons really well. Extreme precision has been found. As we move towards molecules in chemistry, things are difficult to predict. Then comes large molecules of carbon chemistry, organs, physiology, humans, psychology. Well things go unpredictable at levels of large carbon based molecules. Solutions to Schrodinger’s equation exist for such systems. They’re just unrealistically difficult to predict. We can just make estimates. These sciences of organs, physiology, humans, psychology, aren’t exact sciences. We can just fill in few patterns and we’d find explanations. Science is awesome my friend! It more than explains many things!