You know, when I first lost my faith around the age of 13-14, I found myself (this was the early BBS days) arguing with people about religion "online". Like many people who have believed in things only to abandon them later, I had my phase of being an anti-religion zealot... Or better term... Asshole.
Then, I matured, and figured out that it's sometimes best to argue against people trying to impose their beliefs on others, WITHOUT trying to jam a sharp stick in their eye to ridicule their beliefs.
Perhaps one day you may find such maturity as well.
This is something that baffles me about they typical (like
@OrangeAfroMan ) anti-religious leftist.
Historically religion has been used to justify bad things, I don't think anyone would deny that. It has also, however, been used to justify and been the basis of many good things.
They seem to fail to grasp that the religion part is more-or-less irrelevant. People mostly will do what they want to do and use their religion to justify it.
Nietzsche, he of the famous "God is dead" quote, predicted in the 1800's that the 20th century would see terrible wars. The communists were explicitly atheist, enforced atheism, and killed millions. The Nazis were somewhat less openly hostile to religion* but their leaders were nearly all atheists and they killed millions as well. Let's not pretend that the post-religion world will be utopian.
After Katrina I read an article on a leftist site (slate) that basically made the "stick in eye" argument that many of the victims had died "talking to their imaginary friend".
I was, as I said, baffled. Even if we agree, for the sake of discussion, that religion is completely made up why would you take pot shots at victims of a tragedy? How does it hurt you if Christians (or adherents of any other religion) "died talking to their imaginary friend"? Beyond that, if they were caught in a tragic and hopeless situation where they were certain to die why would you be angry that they found comfort in that horrible situation?
*Part of the reason that Hitler was able to take power in Germany was that the Catholics generally preferred Nazis to Communists on the justifiable basis that they had seen the mass executions of priests in the Soviet Union. In the early 1930's it became more-or-less apparent that either the Communists or the Nazis would eventually take power in Germany. At that point even strongly anti-Nazi Catholics were faced with what was tantamount to a choice of the method of their execution.
