Atheism is so upfront and in-your-face incoherent, and it incoherence is so fundamental (at the metaphysical level, with basic assumptions concerning reality, in contradiction) that it is surprising that atheism can be maintained for a lifetime, and even across generations.
But I understand how it works, because I was myself an atheist for over 30 years, and I remember how the contradictions were dealt with.
The basic problem comes out with values; with truth, beauty and virtue (by whatever definition) - and in explaining why values are significant.
Life is all about one thing being better than another, or at least preferable to another; and atheism can give no reason - indeed asserts there is no reason. Except that Every atheist, Especially the most outspoken atheists (i.e. the kind who argue it is Better to be an atheist - and who assume that reasoned argument is better than blank assertion or blind faith!) asserts values, and that his own preferences are significant.
How can this be tolerable? Why don't peoples, heads explode?
Probably because metaphysical incoherence is so normal as to be universal- in all religions and ideologies. Humans are structured to live among self contradictions, even when these are noticed - which is not often.
So people - including atheists - firstly don't notice their incoherence; because they get distracted easily - especially by focusing on the immediate and changing situation of interpersonal interactions. These seem overwhelming, and urgent - so urgent and vital that anything else ought to be postponed, indefinitely...
And then there is negative stuff. People focus on what is negative in others' beliefs; and easily ignore the insanity of getting morally outraged from the basis of an explicit insistence that the universe, human life and their own lives have no purpose or meaning.
Life proceeds at a level where unconscious and spontaneous biological vitality is shaped and directed by social circumstances. From that situation, social assurance and expectations that there Are meanings and life Does have purpose, are sufficient here-and-now.
The details are set aside as something that "must be" okay, because otherwise "people" would not act as if they were OK.
The whole thing is taken On Trust, because people do not trust themselves; and they don't trust themselves for good reasons - whereas (as social beings in a society) they automatically and by default trust vague notions of other people's judgement and motivations.
This is just how people are.
And for much of human history it did not seem to matter much, but now it does matter.
Now we live in a society and world where ultimate assumptions of no-purpose and no-meaning are built into social explanations and functioning; and where the consequent endemic state of demotivation and perplexed confusion have rendered almost-everybody helpless in the face of evil manipulation.
Whole nations/ races/ religions (and other groupings such as age, sex and sexuality) of many millions of people have been set up to fear, resent and annihilate each other.
And because of actual-atheism rooted in ultimate deference to societal assumptions (and which renders modern religious identifications irrelevant because ineffectual), they have zero basis for noticing or understanding - let alone resisting - what is being done to them.
We now need to change the terms of evaluation from trust to responsibility.
The proper question is whether we take personal responsibility for our fundamental assumptions and convictions; or else refuse to do this in favour of entrusting our lives, our souls, our own mortal situation in this world - to some external "authority".
