I often see people pointing out something that an atheist said wrong.  It is good that they are being corrected.  However there are some similar situations in which the atheist was doing the right thing, and I wanted to explore that.  [I’ll only be talking about criticisms of religion that are valid to someone’s actual beliefs, and some that just need to be…

[This was in a response to someone who posted something about "religion is not the problem, people are."]



I would first like to thank you for doing your part to try to correct some of the ignorance of the general population.  You pointed out some errors that people make with their reasoning.  That was great.

I was wondering if we could agree about a few…

If a skeptic or scientific point of view states that these beliefs are not warranted (or that they must be verified) then the believer may push away from skepticism and science to maintain belief.

This is an unnessecary and dangerous tension between this person and the vital tools of science and skepticism.  Placing importance on these beliefs held without reason has done its damage.

This is a…

This is an assault on reason and skepticism.  Faiths flourish because of this, a massive underplay of the importance of skepticism.  This underplay has an impact on the reasoning ability of the general population.  (This is like being against vaccines, there would be more sickness.  With this “believe what we tell you about the supernatural” stuff, the kids skeptical immunity system is left confused and weak)

As a consequence of this assault, people do not…