First, just to vent a little, I want to translate what a reasonable person (i.e. Atheist) hears when a religious person says something like: "I'm being serious, I believe Jesus is my lord and savior, and through faith I hope to be judged worthy of heaven"
WHAT WE HEAR:
"I'm being serious, if you spank enough naughty leprechauns, someday you will be able to ride the magical unicorn to OZ"
You may think I'm just being facetious, but in terms of how ridiculous it sounds to us... it's an accurate account of the "feel."
Okay, so on to why this matters... reality matters. If you believe that nothing in the physical world matters, only the "spiritual," maybe you don't care about Climate Action. If you believe that God will judge and sort people out in the end... creating fair and just societies don't matter. If you believe "faith" is the most important "lesson" to teach children... you don't teach them to think critically, with evidence and reason; worse, you teach them that learning "from authority" is the only way to learn. ("from authority" meaning from an authoritative text [like biblical scripture] or an authority figure [like a pastor or anchorman from your favorite mainstream news station])
Being someone who's run in secular circles at points in my life, I can tell you, even IF people can break out of their religion... the breaking out of the "learning from authority" part is MUCH harder and many tend to replace religion with other self-indulgent identities... like "q-anon believer" or "white nationalist" or "elite professional-managerial class-member" or any other number of identities that are popular and acceptable in the social sphere they exist in. Leaving a religion is hard, but thinking independently, and becoming your own person, is even harder.
Bottom line, I'm tired of people treating religion as neutral... the whole "oh there are good people and bad people in religion"... NO, religion IN AND OF ITSELF is harmful. They indoctrinate children, they often have lobbyists and authoritarian political agendas, they espouse nonsense, they insulate you from other ideas/communities, and they teach you how NOT to learn.
