Let me start by saying that this is the last refuge of the Christian. Having no argument, logic or evidence a theist will simply run back to the dark womb of ignorance crying out "Let me believe it - what's the harm if I believe it?" Well there's a LOT of harm in allowing a population to stay indoctrinated in a fraud - they vote, they discriminate, they think irrationally, they are open to irrational ideas, they can overpopulate and they indoctrinate the next generation.
Opens People to Irrational Ideas.
Faith is a bad thing, a VERY bad thing. Faith is the irrational, unsupported belief in some dogma - sometimes with evidence to the contrary. In the real world the only benefactors of 'Faith' are con-men looking to make a good score or despots expecting to take unquestioning control of a populace. The tools of liberty; science, logic and reason require that all theories and ideologies be supported by real facts and evidence and should be questioned. Religion and tyrants would prefer to kill or silence its critics rather than be questioned. Dogmatic religions villify reason and science while praising unreasoning acceptance of their doctrine (faith). Raising a child to hate reason and then telling him to believe in magic stories - no matter how silly they are - creates dangerous thinking patterns. Children raised to listen to their hearts and realize that reason is just not all that important can be found running after all sorts of selfdestructive theologies and philosophies that make absolutely no sense. Instead of holding an idea up to the light of reason and science; the child is only interested in whether the idea sounds cool and makes him tingle inside. John Walker more popularly known as Johnny Jyhad, is the perfect example of this failure to teach reason over faith. Walker was studying all kinds of mystic/religious crap and encouraged to follow his feelings instead of reason. This of course ends with Walker in Afghanistan fighting for Muslim extremists. Had Walker been instructed early in life to test ideologies against the light of reason and science he may today be an electronic engineer instead of a brainwashed tool of Al Qaeda. I have often spoken to Christians who lament about how their children are going off after Wicca or Scientology or Urantia or Ramtha. My response is that they opened the door for these deceits when they indoctrinated the child into religion. The child's been told to believe that magic and angels and demons and miracles and spirits really exist and they shouldn't believe pesky science. Why should it surprise the Christian then when the child begins to believe in Angel Healing, Pyramid Therapy, Tarot Cards, Spiritual Mediums - it's all the same baloney as believing that Jehovah makes donkeys talk to stop evil prophets.
Acting Irrationally
Having irrationally surrendered his brain
to ancient fairy tales and cult leaders, the religionist is now
ready to act in ways that are contrary to a healthy life. The
religionist will burn his child's Harry Potter books, stop his child
from using the internet, stop his teenage daughter from getting an
abortion, keep his child from watching cartoons, not allow his
children to eat meat or maybe even get medical treatment because of
his religion. Andrea Yates is a good example of this. She was to
over-reproduce BECAUSE of religion. She was to homeschool BECAUSE
of religion. She was to avoid anti-depressants BECAUSE of religion
and suffered a massive breakdown which BECAUSE of religion
manifested itself in a demon fantasy. Andrea Yates' children sure
would've been happy if she would've done her duty and investigated
her religion rather than just accept it on faith.
Voting and Controlling Society Irrationally
The liberation and advancement of humanity
is always accomplished only over the cold, dead bodies of
religionists! Women have the right to vote here but in Muslim
countries women have virtually NO freedoms. This is an irrational
secular viewpoint as women are just as human as men but a viewpoint
which can be supported through religious dogma. Science only
flourishes in an environment where religion has little power in
government. Since the feeling of religion is most similar to the
feeling of "nostalgia" anything new will frighten the religionist
and he will come out against it with sayings like "You're playing
GOD!" or "GOD never meant for humans to....". Examples are many but
I'll list only three: Galileo's solar-centric viewpoint coming in
conlict with the church. Severtus who had researched the human
circulatory system put to death by Calvin. The ardent opposition to
anesthesia by Christians in the 16th century. Today we see
opposition to stem-cell research, cloning and abortion from this
same group.
Brainwashing the Next Generation
The only way to actually
believe that these fairy tales are real is by indoctrinating the
mind before the soldier of reason has had a chance to develop.
Someone who has grown up without religion shrinks back at stories of
magical fruit, talking snakes and angry deities but a child knows no
difference and accepts these children's stories with the same eager
acceptance as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Mother Goose. The
parent fails to tell the child that ALL of these magical people are
fiction and therefore the child is doomed to 1-3 above UNLESS he
manages to use his rational mind to usurp this brainwashing.
Overpopulating
It DOES tend to be a tendency among
religionists to overpopulate. Whether they decry contraception or
abortion or declare that God TOLD US to "be fruitful and multiply"
brainwashed religionists will create sometimes enormous families
with little regard for the consequences. Individual children may be
poor, underfed or neglected but "God will Provide!" I know
personally of a situation where a religious couple with almost NO
means are looking to have a baby. I would try to convince them that
they couldn't afford or care for the child. The only response I
ever get is "God will PROVIDE". It is little wonder then why I am
so desperate to knock the religion out of people.
Discrimination
Michael Medved, movie critic and religio/conservative talk show host best illustrates this by refusing to hire anyone who is "unchurched". In Michael's universe only those who kneel before the gods of ancient mythologies are good enough to operate his technology. Ironically this is technology created by scientists who would've been burned at the stake in a theocracy run by any of these mythologies. The Boy Scouts openly discriminate against atheists and yet appear to have no problem with Wahabi Muslims basically saying that if you kill civilians while blowing yourself up for god, at least you believe in a god so you're better than an atheist! Many states still have laws on the books preventing atheists from holding certain offices. Discrimination against atheists was so rife in early America that people who were obviously atheists (Robert Green Ingersoll for example) would call themselves deists or agnostics.