Basically, I mistook the people arguing me for... well, the Atheist equivalent of that, which turned out to be highly inaccurate. So yeah, it's important to know whether or not you're dealing with those vocal few, who I've had to debate in the past.
It's not just that you were bunching all atheists into one group you perceive to have a negative world view, you're apparently also not aware of many negative effects that correlate with high degree of religiousness.
As an example, people who identify as very religious have, compared to "not very religious" or non-believers:
-higher probability of divorce (as already stated by Battuta)
-higher probability of being a child abuser (and the more religious, the worse it gets. This applies to all forms of abuse - physical, psychological, sexual...)
-higher rate of teen pregnancies*
Religious "motives" for life often turn out to be unrealistic, which isn't surprising for a world view based on fiction**. As a large result, there's a large gap between preaching and practice...
As for your reference to atheists who hold the views you mentioned in your original split post: Just like with the Westboro Baptist Church, the factors that make these people repugnant to you are not representative of the majority.
There might seem be an element of "not a true Scotsman" here, but I don't think the people you mentioned hold those views because they're atheists. I think they hold those views because they're arseholes (or rather, holding those views makes them arseholes). In particular, an atheist can still hold many types of beliefs - although most atheists are also skeptics which tends to increase the attempts to critical thinking, atheists are still susceptible to bias and can have irrational or illogical beliefs such as conspiracy theorist thinking, racism, bigotry, inability to adapt to new information, etc. These views are not caused by them being atheists. In fact, atheism only ever takes a stance on one particular thing - namely, not being a theist (which itself can have several variations that are irrelevant to the issue at hand).
Likewise, I think the problems with Westboro Baptist Church mainly stem from the fact that it is a cult. It promotes a culture of strict social hierarchy, separation from rest of the population, and fearfulness of the cult leaders. What they claim to believe is just repeating what their leader says, and their leader makes this **** up to keep his cult going. There are no great statements of faith in cults, only taught obedience and consent.
In other words, much like atheism is not the factor that makes arseholes behave like arseholes, religiousness is not the primary reason that causes cults (although it can increase
susceptibility to cultist thinking).
It's just humans being dicks.
However, it should also be said that atheism is ethically much less problematic than, say, Christianity. This is largely because atheism does not provide atheists with any particular brand of ethics or morality. While Christianity does provide moral guidance of sorts - it is based on very questionable ethics.
But where Christians often cherry-pick from their particular doctrine all the elements that don't conflict with what they
already believe to be good and right, atheists don't have to deal with any of that and are free to make up their own mind on moral or ethical questions, or follow whichever moral guidance that they happen to agree with.
And, much like any other human beings, atheist morality can be influenced by propaganda and other tools of brainwashing.
*This is largely related to two factors: Religiously motivated "abstinence-only" sex education programmes, and poor availability of contraceptives without parental consent.
In fact, the state of Mississippi has the highest rate of teen pregnancies (previously used to be Texas), Texas has the highest rate of
repeat teen pregnancies, and both states have abstinence-only sex education in their official curricula. In practically all instances of abstinence-only programmes, the rate of teen pregnancies has reduced less than in states that educate about contraceptives and make them available.
I don't know the numbers for rates of abortions among teens with religious background as opposed to abortions of non-religious teen pregnancies. Does anyone know if there's any statistics on this?
**
"Fiction is the form of any work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not real, but rather, imaginary and theoretical—that is, invented by the author." -Wikipedia
or, Merriam-Webster:
1.
a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story
b : fictitious literature (as novels or short stories)
c : a work of fiction; especially : novel
2.
a : an assumption of a possibility as a fact irrespective of the question of its truth <a legal fiction>
b : a useful illusion or pretense
3.
a : the action of feigning or of creating with the imagination
