Perhaps we need to have an "
Ex-Christian" movement?
"I was led out of ignorance and shown the light of rational thought." --Joe in Alabama.
"My life was going nowhere. I was wasting every Sunday sitting around pretending I bought into this myth. But the whole time, I wanted something more, something that could renew my faith in life. Ultimately, I got up the courage to walk away from Christianity and into the light of sanity." --Annie from Illinois.
"The only thing that kneeling down and looking at the sky ever got me was sore knees and a stiff neck." --Anonymous (A sore asshole and mastery of the gag-reflex if you're talking about Catholics)
"Once I had an impure thought and realized that Satan was not going to swallow me up into eternal damnation and hellfire, I realized the whole thing was just a big joke." --Ed in Florida.
... or am I getting nasty here?
Just the same as the mental palliative of religion can provide comfort, so too can faith in one's self independent of a belief in some god object. The proof or disproof of god exists in equal quantities, leaving us with a distinct certainty: The existence of God cannot be proven.
This isn't necessarily about being mean-spirited or mocking an adversary. This is about ridiculing the idea that the trials of one's life are simply solved by buying into the fiction of a god object and offloading one's day-to-day morality onto a foundation as faulty as a belief in God. What greater trick can be played upon someone in the throes of a personal crisis than to base their salvation upon a lie?
Having encountered many clergy from various denominations, and having had many conversations surrounding my "leaving the faith," I have had ample opportunity to hear an oft repeated refrain: "It sounds as if you have a misunderstanding about <insert_religion_name_here>." This is usually followed by a long treatise about how the "misunderstandings" put forth by another faith have led to one's current disillusionment. On rare occasions, one is lucky enough to get a raised index finger followed by "Ah ha!" as though some eureka! moment has just arrived.
The hidden message here is "every other religion/faith/denomination is wrong, and I am right." With this shifting quicksand framework, it is impossible to pin a religion to a single set of beliefs. Why is this problematic? Because none are proven or disproven, only made valid in one's mind by syllogistic nonsense, the whole thing is a nonsensical game of musical chairs--hope you're a member of the right denomination when the music stops (or you're going to hell).
Meanwhile, while all the priests and pastors are throwing dice for the rights to someone's soul, the person truly in need of support, empowerment, and personal courage, is continuously shifted about. They're told this, that, and something else, so long as the problem can be distilled down to a lack of faith and lack of membership. In the end, the mythology takes precedence over the person.
Would a religion be willing to destroy itself to save the soul of another?