I don't think Tallis believes in an afterlife though.
But what are deities? Or, for that matter a Deity? The former would just be spirits with some dominion over certain aspects of reality, the latter some kind of metaphysical lynchpin who at minimum brought reality into being.
What is "deity"? One of the biggest questions in theology. The basis for a good deal of religion, and what differentiates religions from one another. Is there one deity or many? Does deity sit outside reality, or is reality? Is deity the ultimate cause, or the ultimate destination? Is Deity perfect, all done and finished, or is Deity not perfect, still becoming? Is there a deity?
Are we asking the right questions? Can we ask the right questions?? Suppose we are fish in a pond and have the intellectual capacity of fish. Could we imagine what is beyond our pond? Would we be able to imagine other ponds? Could we imagine other planets? Other types of beings?? Perhaps our human intellect is much like fish, any attempts we make to imagine something outside the pond, will likely fall short of the actual reality.
What I find alarming in the Neo-Atheist movement is they make the claim theirs is not even a belief system! I have even come across some atheists who insist science has proven there is no God. And yet, heck, here in our human pond of ours, we don't even have an inkling what gravity actually is (we know what it does, but not what it is). We have no idea what a good percent of the universe is made up of given dark matter. We still don't know how an act of observation creates the collapse of a wave into elementary particles. And no-one, not even Stephen Hawkings - perhaps one of the bigger fish in the pond, has been able to explain how something comes from nothing, how the laws of physics, laws of reality, consciousness, the universe itself came into being - or even exists in the first place!
The red flag with the Neo-Atheist movement for me has been their willingness to censor and ridicule others who do not hold their beliefs. And then you have guy like Sam Harris, condemning publicly all Muslims, arguing the Muslim religion is among the worst religions of all. As if his Atheistic secularism leads to some kind of saintly activity in human history: can we say Pol Pot? Can we say Joseph Stalin? Can we say the last two world wars were not caused by religious believers?
The danger is non-tolerance and militancy. The danger is radicalism and the willingness to deceive, to break the rules, to ignore facts, just to promote your creed over someone elses.
My Best,
Bertha