Atheists are like frogs in the proverbial pot of hot water. They look through their glass across the stove at the hell realms of religion, critiquing them as psychologically warping, but have conveniently forgotten that they themselves are in a heat-rising psychological cauldron as well, for if atheism is true it means that life is a war against fiery Dionysian and entropic forces, existence has no ultimate meaning, you appear to be nothing, and nobody gets out alive.
Welcome!
Is it any wonder that so many people flee this hell realm of suffering, death, and nihilism for the comforts of religion, however delusional?
Prometheus Unbound 
What about group identity? If people identify not as an individual but as part of a family / race / any group, then they can avoid this. It’s the Buddhist approach, denial of the self as an individual entity to escape existential fear. Of course, as an Objectivist I reject this entirely and would rather accept my temporary nature than live for a fantasy afterlife or deny that I ever existed at all. Just saying though, there’s a third option.
Andrew:
I hadn’t thought of Buddhism in this way, but yes, you are right. The problem, of course, is that it barely works, even in the best of circumstances, and even when you are meditating a lot. Tell a Buddhist that he or she has lost a child in a car wreck and the “illusion” of the narrative self returns with a good deal of force.
“Where is the self that is weeping?” suddenly seems beside the point.
—Santi
I can almost see Richard Dawkins eating flies.
It’s not surprising at all.
Santi – Hi
I like the (Japanese?) frog.
However, isn’t the lesson, from the proverbial frog, that the frog is comfortable and the pain is only in the perception of observers? Certainly, speaking as the atheist frog, I can promise you it’s actually not that uncomfortable. And, to stay with the metaphors, my advice to (mistakenly) empathetic agnostics is – if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (and go sit in chapel with the deluded religious).
-Colin