What, say, the Christians would have one believe, for instance: that the Supreme Creator of the universe secretly substituted his sperm for Joseph’s, but Mary, you know, noticed the substitution, because well, Joseph, well, he was betrothed, but well, never, you know, *did that*, so the baby that was forthcoming was of course, the “Son” of God, but such a concept isn’t conceivable (no pun intended) so clearly this “Son” must actually _be_ God, and well, God has prepared a special place, well, two special places to which you might go when you die. One of the places is non-specifically wonderful. (Don’t ask.) The other place is specifically horrible, with fire, and “brimstone” (melted , burning sulphur — if you’ve never gotten some sulphur from the drugstore and set it on fire, I highly recommend it as an experiment, supposing they still sell sulphur at drugstores these days.) Anyway, the 2nd place is full of everlasting torrment (see th e Bible, end of Matthew, ch. 25), so you def. don’t want to go there.) Since you don’t want to go there, you’d best believe….

My point is, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, all that is required is that you not be completely fucking retarded.

If you have an ounce of sense and and ounce of confidence in your own abilities to think, and the ability to catch a whiff of bullshit from all the people loudly professing belief, then you’ll figure it out.

You don’t have to be smart to figure out it’s bullshit. It’s obviously bullshit. You have to have enough confidence to buck society’s expectation. Most people don’t have that.

Consequently the best way to promote skepticism of the prevailing religion is to make yourself well known as a skeptic. The more “normal” it is perceived for people to be skeptical (by highly visible examples) the more people will be willing to acknowledge their own doubts, and repudiate what has, heretofore, been the societal norm — belief in the insulting idiocy called Christianity.