Hi:
I'll start by saying I support your broad aims - those being, to reduce or eliminate the
kind of religion that says there's a God you can pray to who favors believers over
nonbelievers. I know, you're saying "We want to reduce or eliminate ALL religion". Fair
enough. But you talk about religion as if it's like smoking or women's suffrage, just
another societal preference we can quite easily change, given enough people and enough
time. But there's a key difference between those societal preferences and belief in God,
which makes the approach you are taking on this site less effective than I think it could
be. The difference with religion is this:
People want to believe.
People want to find meaning in life. For some of them "The universe is essentially
random, but it's better to seek positive outcomes for ourselves individually and
collectively than to just sit around doing nothing/be destructive" is inherently
unsatisfying, in a way quitting smoking or granting women the vote was not. Even if you
tell them that their beliefs don't make any sense, they are still going to want to
believe in something. So they'll just go searching again, and the next person who comes
up with something they could buy into will have their devotion. You could destroy the
credibility of every religion on earth, and new ones would spring up in their place.
So what do you do?
You stop saying "God doesn't exist", and say instead "God may exist. We don't think he
does, but we can't say on the evidence it's impossible that the universe was created by
something. But based on the evidence, we can say your image of God is wrong". And then
you give them something which fits the facts we know, but provides them a way to find
meaning in their lives, while getting behaviors similar to those of "there is no God"
type atheists.
If you're one of those, you're probably thinking "That's impossible, the belief in things
we can't prove is delusional, nothing meaningful or positive will come out of trying to
make up a better story, and the right approach is to get people to come to their
senses!". My argument is they won't, they don't want to, and you would be much better
off pushing for something like this:
http://evolutionisgod.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-i-think.htmlI'm not saying your position on the non-existence of God is necessarily wrong, I'm just
saying your goals will be accomplished much more quickly if you keep your approach as
practical as possible.
Cheers,
[Name]