That's why folks like you and me are so outspoken against it. Nearly all of the best posters here have attacked religion in one way or another, and I would go so far as to say that their fear and loathing of religion at large was probably unanimously instigated by fundamentalist attacks on academia and science, and by fundamentalist intrusion into the bedrooms and personal choices of free individuals who resent the sanctimony that inspires social conservatism and all its trappings. Add to this the opportunistic exploitation of the gullible minds of fundies by Big Money, and the mere potential for effectuating that intrusion escalates from yellow alert status to one of "clear and present danger". In a purely objective world, fundamentalism as we know it would be designated a threat to national security, and effective counter measures would be in place to prevent its infection of vulnerable young minds. Subsequent generations would be grateful for that and it would be celebrated as the end of a dark era in human history, one in which the yoke of primitive superstition was finally shaken off--the advent of a new dawn in civilization, one which actually moves through space and time by detecting and eliminating threats to peace and well-being of all humans, with a collateral focus on mitigating human impact on the natural systems needed to support future generations.
Stupidity fights back hard, though, and it's loaded with a galvanizing meanness that attacks all ideals that are fairly labeled "atheist" regardless of their humanizing effect, based on a return to more salient principles best characterized as "sacred": truth, transparency, objectivity, fairness, evidence and the pursuit of knowledge. All of these idealized goals serve to promote human welfare in the most direct and productive ways conceivable. Stupidity wages war on all such ideals. After all, knowledge does trump stupidity. But stupidity fights under protection of a cloaking device. It's not a tangible enemy but a virtual construct, one which invades and infects vulnerable minds rapaciously.
I suppose stupidity has to run its course like any other infection, and the individual autoimmune systems of believers has to develop to the point of throwing it off without external intervention. Only then, I believe, will that new day come when we can get up and look in the mirror and truly appreciate the world that is looking back at us.
I would love to wake up in such a world. I know you would too. Hell, I would elect you Supreme Commander of Good Vibes, just to repay all the angst you've paid at this site alone.
I would envision that as a job like the guy who drives an ice cream truck, only all of the ice cream is on the house. You have to give it out before it melts, and as soon as one crate is gone, another is loaded by the likes of -- well, how about me? I'd be glad to pay it forward as well. Good Vibes Ice Cream("a taste of atheist heaven by the scoop") would not only be a zero carb, zero fat replica of the real thing, it would taste better and last a long time. It would restore the sense of longing or incompleteness that accompanies the thirst and hunger for more and better information, without dulling the impetus to keep chipping away at the next layer of truth that awaits discovery. This I suppose is an analogous ideal to the one that led to the invention of Christian communion, but completely dissociated from primitive cult ritual roots and instead plugged into the living world. It would actually recharge us and sustain us, and, for once, without simultaneously trying to contain us and blind us.
If not for stupidity I imagine we would be there today, or at least well on our way. Now back to bashing fundies
. . . Where were we?