What is needed to combat the overwhelming level of belief in God?

[Excited Penguin]

It's not -just- an ideological product.  You and I don't believe this stuff, but I'd bet every dollar I have that you and I both have perceived or invested agency and/or intent to something that had neither.  It's not simply an issue of thinking a god into existence, we have actual physical ticks that conspire, along with our thinking brains, to create such fictions as gods.  I'm not saying we're doomed, I don't see the doom, lol.  You/we can be as religious as all hell about daisies and sunflowers.  It's the specifics we obsess about, the types of misconceptions and ticks that stick, that cause the problems, not that we're capable of obsessing, that we're prone to misconception, that we have ticks.

You ever talked anyone out of their religion?  Brought them around to your point of view?  I haven't.  I'm satisfied to have them incorporate things like modern synth -into- their religion..that's a best case scenario for me.  That their personal faith accommodates reality insomuch as it can and insomuch as they, individually, need to.

Well, sure, I do that all the time but I'm also aware of the fact that it's almost certainly not true. I don't really take it seriously, therefore. And there's a big difference between that and being religious. And we were talking about religion. I don't think it's that difficult to make society let go of it. Sure, we'll still have some natural predisposition to all sorts of stupidity, on all levels, but I don't think that we can't overcome that either, with time and practice. I see the human mind as a thing that can change for the better, not a program with set rules in place. I'm no neuroscientist but I'm fairly sure they see it that way too.

Look, I was religious once. My whole world revolved around it - not that I knew it then, I wasn't even that extreme in my beliefs, but in retrospect it turns out it was a pretty pivotal thinking for my whole thinking and my waking experience. When I look back to that period now it seems like I was in some sort of dream-state, or constantly on drugs or something. But I came in contact with one atheist and argued with her, read some Nietzsche, thought about it a lot and voila. For me, the whole thing came down at once. It turned out to be just a language game and I could do away with it with no remorse. That's probably because I wasn't emotionally attached to it or anything - or maybe I'm still in shock because there's no God, who knows?   But my suspicion is that a lot more believers are like me. I think they're more interested in the truth then in having gotten it right from the first try. They just don't have the tools to think it through, but surely we can help with that. But we have to believe that it's possible, first of all, and truly wish to make progress on this front.