It just goes to show that you can't simply dismiss creationists as "idiots" or "stupid". I find it interesting to try to look beyond the delusion to try to understand why they would want to hold that point of view. Particularly obviously clever people with a keen interest in scientific discovery.
When I read Richard Dawkins book "the god delusion" one thing I took out of it was that religions facilitate their survival by getting new followers when they are young. Children haven't had time to learn about dangers that could imperil their survival and hence the genes. Religion exploits the biological imperative of human young, who cannot survive independently, to need to obey adults.
I wonder if there are statistics on what percentage of creationists did not have parents who also were creationists. People who later in life decided to embrace creationism and religion in general. I also wonder why when the child has matured they "choose" to retain such beliefs. We let go of the easter bunny, the tooth fairy and Santa Claus when we reach an age where we can reason the facts out for ourselves. God is similarly a fanciful human invention but the delusion is retained by many into adulthood.
Probably the answer lies in power and influence, and wealth for the clerics. Also you would need to confront being deceived by your parents and that they are wrong. Maybe there are social pressures too.
I think most people would rather take the easy road. Growing up surrounded by religion and then becoming an Atheist as an adult means you have to start asking questions; very tough ones that make you very uncomfortable. Most people go down that road by noticing the fallacies and inconsistencies of religion and then seeking out answers, which requires critical thinking skills and intelligence. This is what makes me so in awe of him being a Creationist. He's obviously got the skills to see it's BS (
) but he just can't see the Forrest through the trees. (That was awful, I know.)
Adults don't believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny, but they do believe in God. People take the easy road, the shortcut to information, by looking around and noticing that everyone around them believes in God, so they assume it to be true. After all, how could *everyone* be so wrong, right? That's part of the social pressure. The other part is that nobody wants to be an outsider, so even if they have doubts they go along with it anyway to keep up with the status quo.
...a non sociopathic atheist is generally a romantic...
I don't think most Atheists are sociopaths. I think there are two distinct groups:
1) The Romantic Atheist: Like you said, these are the ones that generally go with the flow and are live and let live. In my experience, these are people who grew up either loosely religious or with no religion.
2) The Angry Atheist: These are the people that are angry at religion and the religious. I personally think the anger stems from being controlled by religion from an early age; people that had overly strict or fundamentalist parents, were forced to attend church daily, went to Catholic schools and so forth. Instead of just moving on and living life, they harbor a deep seated resentment towards anything religious and seek to punish anyone connected to it.