Religion is a Mental Illness

Thank you, I appreciate it.

The thing is though that I don’t believe you can “convert” people. They can only convert themselves.

What “Atheism 2.0″/”New Atheism” is about is not apologising for, as you say, not believing in nonsense - unproven, factless superstitions. Being visible, saying that we’re not going away, and challenging the expectation of superstitious theism as the default, pandered position, immune to analysis and criticism.

As I’ve said before, there are parallels with the gay community: demanding equal treatment under the law (#1, #2), debunking propaganda touting atheists as dangerous or immoral (#3, #4, #5, #6), and normalizing atheism through visibility… revealing one’s atheism is even referred to as “coming out” and can result in similar social and familial exclusion and other repercussions - even career implications.

You can’t make people accept gay people or atheists, but you can, over time - and as universal access to information helps make the world more egalitarian and secular - make them look backwards and foolish for sticking with baseless, stupid stereotypes and bigotry. Hopefully, over time, they will eventually become the outlying lunatic minority, just as we laugh at Flat Earthers. (But we will still treat them better than they treated us.)

The obvious difference in the analogy being that you can’t change your sexual orientation, but you can stop being an irrational, blinkered, superstitious theist. Many have.

We just have to keep asking the questions and pushing the points: Why do you believe what you believe? Are they good, well-founded reasons? How did you come to the conclusion those beliefs are uniquely true?

As evolution demonstrates, over time, small, sometimes almost imperceptible changes add up. Just keep chipping away, making those small cracks.

And refuse to apologise for not bowing to Magical Sky Santa. Whichever fairytale it belongs to and whatever form it supposedly takes.