I think an honest review will show you that there are a whole lot more missionaries trying to convert people to a specific religions than there are atheists trying to convert theists.

I, for one, spend very little time on it, because most people are very set in their beliefs and it’s a waste of time on both sides.

You asked:

Surely a lot of wrong is done in the world, a great deal in the name of god, but isn’t that in the nature of human beings, not the nature of faith?

No, that is exactly the nature of faith. If you have faith that somebody else is telling you what god wants – which is a feature of most religions – then you are no longer making moral decisions, and you can be used by whoever has the power in your religion.

Sometimes you are used for what I consider to be evil goals of the power broker, sometimes you are merely used as a source of funding to continue “god’s work”.

Religion is by no means the only way to get this – nationalism is also a good tool – but religious faith is the easiest one.

Posted: March 9th 2009

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

When I get the wrong end of the stick, I appreciate when someone takes the time to set me straight. It may be a struggle to get me to see the light, but if the person is correct in her knowledge, I will eventually accept it. I do not want to be let be. I am grateful that there are out-spoken, passionate people who want to spread their knowledge. And yet, religious believers, who accept the most inane, ridiculous, and often immoral (for example, the scapegoat approach represented by Jesus, that his death would actually absolve a person’s guilt—such an approach would be laughed at in our present-day courts, or the primitive, uneducated, and psychologically crippling notion that humans are born in sin), want to be let be, not only personally, but they want, no, demand, for religion to be beyond criticism, unlike any other topic.

I, myself, am completely uninterested in de-converting any theist. I am bored with people who want to be let be. If a person is on the cusp of becoming an atheist, then my interest perks up, and I will spend time answering questions and discussing the matter. However, I am very focused on ripping apart the dangerous notion that non-evidential faith is a positive boon and should be uncritically accepted. In my life-long battle against sexism and racism, I did not focus on 'de-converting’ individual sexist/racists, but on dismantling the societal uncritical acceptance that such notions are acceptable. And that is what I am doing with religion. There are racists and sexists certainly today in the Western world, but they have a hard time peddling their nonsense and getting it into our public institutions. And that is the same focus that I have on religion at present.

And as for this most religion calls to be good viewpoint, or I can say is, so what? What does that even mean? So much of religious belief has to do with the bottom line. Yes, many humans strive to be good, in the sense they want to prevent harm to themselves and others (selfish gene leads to the altruistic society). Let us do good for the right reasons, not because we can’t confront reality and insist on hiding behind fairy tales.

Posted: March 9th 2009

See all questions answered by logicel

A lot of the time, the problem isn’t what religion explicitly calls people to do. It’s what religion actually causes people to do.

Of course many good deeds and acts of self-improvement are credited to divine inspiration. Thing is, how many of them could not have been done by a non-religious person? Do you need God to be good? Probably not, I’m sure you’ll agree, even if you disregard atheists, because from your perspective billions of people worldwide are trying their best to be good while following false gods.

On the other hand, there is a unique kind of logical path from religious belief to certain awful deeds. Belief in a wondrous cosmic afterlife led the Heaven’s Gate cultists to kill themselves as Hale Bopp whizzed by. Muslim martyrdoms got increasingly spectacular until 9/11 topped them all. Multitudes died in the Thirty Years War in the 17th century, simply because they’d been raised with one kind of Christianity and ran into soldiers from another kind.

Without religion, I reason, it would be much easier to replace religionists’ proclaimed reasons for being good than to replace their reasons for committing atrocities.

Posted: March 8th 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX

Rather than attempting to convert people to my way of thinking, I’m more interesting in making the case for atheism and for a rational, scientific, human-centered world view. It does seem to be the case, however, that religionists usually regard any such presentation to be an attack on their beliefs.

I’m not much bothered by people who claim divine inspiration helps them to lead better lives. It’s when those people want to impose their “divinely inspired” rules on other people, that I feel obliged to speak up.

Criticism of religion in general is warranted because many religionists claim their religions should be controlling on the rest of society. No religion should expect to offer its dogma as a universal standard for humankind and not have that dogma examined and critiqued.

Posted: March 8th 2009

See all questions answered by George Ricker

I can only speak for myself, but I seek to de-convert moderate religionists because moderate religion gives credence to fundamentalist religion. If all moderate religionists gave up the small bit of religion they still hold onto, fundamentalists would be a tiny group of insane people with no massive audience to fall back on.

I seek to de-convert fundamentalist religionists because I rather enjoy living on this planet and I would prefer no one nuke it while I’m here.

Posted: March 8th 2009

See all questions answered by Reed Braden