Welcome!
Religion is the backbone of ignorance and most conflict seen today, and throughout human history. It is the leading cause of human suffering. It promotes prejudice by its very nature. The sooner it has been erradicated the better.
There's nothing inherently wrong with belief in a god, gods, alien visitation, or santa claus. But when groups of people who believe these things congregate and attempt to force their views upon everyone else, it becomes the most disgusting creation of our species. It must be ended for our species to survive and prosper.

Hi, up_the_ante

The vast majority of atheists have had religion in their upbringing. The reasons for the difference in the severity of animosities toward religion among atheists is based solely upon their own individual experiences.

For instance, I think there is a direct correlation between how extreme the 'faith' was in regard to how we react to it now.

If an individual grows up in a moderate household then I believe they are moderate in their activism when they grow up(believer or not).

You'll find quite a bit of material on this site with regard to the various ideas of how religion hurts humanity.

My opinion is that all religions surreptitiously supplant our empathy toward one another with the religion itself. e.g. 'Love jesus more than your family', 'honor buddha by loving everything equally', 'allah is god and muhammad is his prophet', 'the losers were marked by El with dark skin', 'god promised Abraham his people were the chosen', etc.

Meanwhile, I assert that a society devoid of religion becomes self-reliant and assumes all consequences for its actions rather than being able to use the catch-all blame machine/aka scapegoat(bible) known as 'god'.

Now, this is all regardless of whether or not a god(s) exists. Atheists have chosen to be without BELIEF in god(s) and thus you'll find the word 'agnostic' almost useless. Theism requires a positive belief, the assertion from someone that 'they believe in god(s)' is all that is needed to qualify whereas atheism is lacking a positive belief or not believing. The label covers such a broad range of people including self-proclaimed 'agnostics', apathetic atheists, and the people who assert that there is no god.

Hope that helps.

Well I'm glad to hear you have that view, butterbattle. (I guess I was just reading posts of people who were a little more... radical.)

In fact, I think you have the same opinion as my best friend.

So a theist could be an agnostic?

I thought theist means you believed there was a god and that agnostic meant you didn't know if there was a god...

Oh well, show how much I know. LOL

Well, I suppose this is a categorical question on the distrinction between beleifs and knowledge. Some suppose that knowledge is justified true belief, that is to say that some belief X actually is true and one has good reason to think that X is true. If there are such categorical distinctions, one could have belief in a god without actually knowing whether that that god exists. That is a beleif that is not neccessarily true, but otherwise unknown. I suppose this would be an "agnostic" theist.

When you use the word "abolish" you make us sound like Hitler. WE DO want to see the end of religion, that part is true. BUT TACTIC has to take into account human empathy. FORCE never works. It doesn't work for believers on other believers and it wont work for atheists either.

BUT what we can do is use the same free market of ideas to SHOW people that they don't need it, be it through debate, blasphemy or ridicule or science. Only politically correct people, believers or not, want to use force.

A position switched on one's own terms is a REAL change. A position switched by the force of another make people bitter and violent. Reason isn't what leads you to what you want to hear, reason leads you to what can be verified independently outside your own bias.

We don't want to abolish religion anymore than we want to abolish people from believing the earth is flat. Galileo didn't want to "abolish" those claims, he simply told those around them they got it wrong. Conversely, the CHURCH tried to "abolish" his truth telling by putting him under house arrest. But the church still lost to the truth, didn't it?

LOL. Actually, I would say every person labeled 'sane' is agnostic. Theist or atheist. Because if one 'knew' there was a god then they wouldn't have to worry about that pesky belief or faith issue.

Read some of the answers to the question: "How do you personally know there is a god?"

Try to keep a straight face while reading. I dare you.

Good point. That puts things in perspective.

But I still don't feel like Galileo was insensitive to the fact that he was changing the whole world. Literally. LOL.

Trust me, I know it's frustrating when people are slow to understand reason, but staying respectful is always a good thing - even if I believe something as ridiculous as Santa coming to my house on Christmas.

My view is that religions I don't know about aren't nearly big enough to be a threat, so I don't tend to engage them in debate. Even the biggest religions have many followers that will never cross my path for the simple reason that they don't feel the need to preach at every street corner or tell me what my kids (if I had any) should be learning in school. I do acknowledge that many forms of believers are in and of themselves not the problem. So I leave them be and focus on the dangerous ones.