I would see this as an extreme reaction to the "reduction" of the gods to natural forces, ancient kings, etc. These are not even new arguments. The Greek philosophers were already arguing the nature and origin of the gods. Plato's "One" is very far removed from Homer's and Hesiod's Zeus. Euhemerus argued that the gods had originated as great men, kings and warriors who were idealized and worshipped after their deaths. Christian theologians seized on some of these arguments to label the Pagan gods as false and their own as real and then later scholars extended this into the anthropological and psychological study of religions. So, reaction to this is to reject the very idea--Zeus is not rain and thunder--I'm not a stupid kid or primitive tribesman to think that a natural phenomenon, well explained by science, is a god. Zeus isn't the inflated memory of a warrior who ruled a hill fort and a patch of country smaller than Manhattan some 4000 years ago. Zeus is Zeus.

As has often been observed, the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea.

Rita