[T]he prospect of a Godless world is more salient for some than for others. Nietzsche wrote about this in the broader cultural sense...and Linker talks about it later in the personal sense: "There are no disappointments recorded in the pages of [New Atheist] books, no struggles or sense of loss. Are they absent because the authors inhabit an altogether different spiritual world than the catastrophic atheists?" Speaking for myself: yes. I have never in my life felt the need to believe in God, and that lack simply doesn't inspire any emotional resonance in me. I don't know why this is, but I do know that I don't feel empty inside, I'm perfectly capable of feeling wonder and awe, and there's no sense of loss or anything else involved in any of this. Linker might regard that as unfathomable, finding the tortured brooding of the catastrophic atheist more to his liking, but it's so. And I have no idea how you discuss this. Linker feels the pull of the supernatural and I don't, and all the conversation in the world won't change that or make it any more explicable.
I totally respect Kevin's position, even though I could not share it if I tried. If I may intrude, and ask a questoin I do not mean to be loaded, just curious: I wonder what Kevin thinks happens to him when he dies? And how does he feel about that - not just emotionally but existentially? These questions can be addressed without talking of God. And yet they reveal something about what it is to be human.