Religion
In reply to the discussion: Must Atheists Trash Religion? [View all]ExciteBike66
(2,700 posts)You and I agree on some stuff, but you are missing my point.
The topics you list are all fine, except my point was that anything an atheist says on those topics is BY DEFINITION "condemnation" of religion, since the atheist disagrees fundamentally with the idea of religion in the first place. We can discuss religion in government, but the basis for the fact that I don't want religion to interfere with government is that I don't think there is a god. That of course leads to the conclusion that I think the religion is "hooey", since how could it not be if there is no god?
Discussing the positives of religion could potentially be done without overt condemnation, I suppose. That said, if one doesn't believe in a god, then one would probably just point out that the positives of religion are really the positives of any large group coming together, and are completely divorced from the existence of a god (I am thinking of stuff like charity, which is a good thing but of course not limited to religion).
As to your reference to our history, if course I think it is a crude punchline! Have you read any history? It's been 100k years and more of killing and other terrible nonsense. Much of which was predicated on there being a sky fairy. How anyone can read human history and NOT condemn it is beyond me.