First, when I was moderately religious, as a kid, it was from not knowing the alternatives. I got taught that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses existed and that Moses wrote the Torah. I believed that from ignorance, not idiocy. I bet lots of believers never have learned different.
So what I copied from you above makes me think that maybe we should “teach the controversy” - you know what the creationists say. Now they are stupid, since there is no controversy, but since much of religion is unfalsifiable it might work there. Teach high school or below kids what various holy books say, but also teach what the latest in religious scholarship, history and physics say.
Who could object to that? 
Last night I was reading him Shel Silverstein poems, and “No Difference” came up. Its point is that we all look the same with the lights off…
So maybe the way
To make everything right
Is for God to just reach out
And turn off the light!
Immediately - “God’s not real.”
Ever had to explain what a metaphor is to a kindergartener in pajamas?
Next time, try Ma and God.
“The belief that there are no atheists in foxholes comes from the idea that when the bombs are falling, we all return to Jesus and start putting our hands together and pray. This is fallacious in fifty different ways. If you are truly theistic, and you were in a foxhole and the bombs were dropping, you would be going, “I hope they get me. I am so ready for Heaven.” Instead, everyone puts on a helmet and ducks down to stay alive, which makes me believe that there are no theists in foxholes.” - Noah Lugeons, The Atheist Experience – 2019-01-13
It was a money thing, though, she wasn’t murdered by rampaging Christians.
I’m a Xian but don’t believe this: ya’ll are goin’ to hell. In reality, if a lot of the atheists I know are there I’d be glad to go.
For Christopher Hitchens, one big drawback of being an atheist was letting the world know he had terminal cancer, then being subjected to endless questions along the lines of, “Now that you are facing your mortality, are you finally going to believe in God?”
Theists don’t understand atheists. They think that we’re just playing at non-believing, and that when push comes to shove, there are no atheists in foxholes. Hence everyone was sure that a terminally-ill Hitchens would finally drop the atheism nonsense and admit that he believes in God.
Of course he didn’t. Why would he? What is there about dying that changes the logical conclusions you’ve come to over a life of thinking?
Awesome
My understanding is that when Isaac Asimov was dying he took steps to ensure that no idiot claimed he had a deathbed conversion. In any case, even if he had religious training when young (I don’t remember it from his autobiography) he wouldn’t have believed in heaven and hell anyway, being Jewish. I never did.
John Shelby Spong, an Episcopalian bishop, had some interesting things to say about hell. He sees it as an invention of the church to get compliance.
To expound a bit further on this:
Even the most religious people apply a tough standard of scrutiny and evidence towards things that are non-religious. If a Christian went car shopping, for instance, and a salesman told them, “This Toyota Camry can get 200 miles per gallon,” they wouldn’t believe it. They would demand strong evidence - proof - of such a wild claim. And if the salesman said, “I can’t prove it, but you just got to have faith, now please hand over ten thousand dollars and buy the car,” they would walk right off the parking lot.
But when it comes to their religion, suddenly they apply a double standard - everything is allowed to pass by with the loosest and laxest standard of evidence.
So, it’s not about a lack of IQ (a great many scientists, inventors, mathematicians, engineers, etc. are Christian,) but rather, that they can embrace cognitive dissonance in a way that non-religious people generally can not.
I’m not saying everything about Christianity is false, but a lot of false stuff is swallowed without question.
He was not actually required to do that. He easily could have kept it out of the news and just checked out when it was time to check out. Not sure why he felt compelled to announce it, unless he was some kind of Individual-ONE-like narcissistic attention whore.
Huh? Prominent people announcing they have some serious and life-threatening illness happens all the time. So why does this make Hitchens an attention whore?
Hitchens continued to make public appearances and debate (the things that he loved) up until very near his end. By that time it was quite clear from looking at him that he was ill. I’m not sure what part of living life to the last possible moment has to do with being a narcissistic attention whore? I suppose he could have hid in his home and waited to die, but what possible reason was there to do so?
I suppose that’s another hard part of being an atheist. People have a double standard for you. I never heard anyone call Alex Trebek an attention whore for announcing he had terminal cancer and continuing to host Jeopardy.
“I’m kind of under the weather” is all anyone outside the Circle needs to know.
WTF is “The Circle?”
If you were inside the Circle you wouldn’t have to ask.
He’d lost all his hair and eyebrows, and I’m guessing about 40 pounds. I know the English are known for their understatements, but I’m not sure that “I’m a bit under the weather” was going to cut it.