Roast, roast.

I think it harkens back to evolution and ourt animal instincts to be a part of a group to insure better survival. As people get older, if they are nto a part of a group, they feel a lot more insecure. Back in teh hunter fatherer days, if old people weren't a part of a group, then they had nobody to take care of them, so it may be hardwired for sumpe eople instinctually to be a part of a group so they are taken care of as they get older.

Unfortunately, religion is the primary way to join a group that provides a sense of community and belonging (which is/are the only pisitive aspects religion really has to offer).

It isn't just Pascal's wager working on them when they get older. It's a bit mroe complicated than that.

Walter Brennan (of Real McCoys) did the same thing. Randy Travis went religious after his long top record career slowed up and he was so much into alcohol. Rather than follow them in fear, my studies got rid of my invisible friends.

I think on reflection of this issue what peeves me generally, not Mr Hopkins specifically, about stories of non believers who late in life turn religious and publicize it, is that it plays into religious believers' belief or view that agnostics/atheists are really "deep down inside" believers in God and religion, and that passing years and approaching end of life reveals it. That's why they often jump on such stories. Remember the false story about how Christopher Hitchens supposedly embraced religion before his death, though there was not a scrap of proof of that? If a celebrity finds religion late in life, well, that's their choice, but spares us giving religion a free kick when they do by publicizing it. That's what I find daggy. It's not just that I don't agree with their religion, but also I immediately regard them less.

the older i get, the less tolerant i am of the idea that i need an imaginary friend. there ARE atheists in foxholes, no matter how the saying goes. i am sorry for mr. hopkins. he IS a great actor and not an idiot either; i don't know what makes people go for the gods. what @bierbasstard has said i have known for a while (not the quotations, just the struggle and all that) and he is correct about aa and its god-based philosophy. that could well have contributed to mr. hopkins' reversion.

g

Anatta , shunyata