Reductio ad Absurdum: How to most efficently communicate with theists

[Angrboda]

I think people gravitate toward or away from faith based upon personal variables and biases that are unique to each individual. Each is engaged in a process of evaluating evidence. This evaluation will take some deeper into faith, and take others further away from faith. I think this process of the person's biases grinding away at the data occurs mostly in private, and there is little an outsider can do to change the trajectory of a specific individual. The hostile-to-religious-ideas approach may reveal some disparity between one's reasoning and one's beliefs may provoke some anxiety in the believer. But it is the unique trajectory of the believer that determines how they will respond to that anxiety. Naturally, we are inclined to adjust our behavior to minimize our anxiety. That may happen by changing our beliefs to more closely align with reason, or it may take the form of desensitizing the believer to those thoughts.

All in all, I think conflict with the religious can be a useful tool towards facilitating the exit of a believer gravitating away from belief, but its potential tends to be overstated. Whether that conflict takes the form of a hard sell or a soft sell, the greatest influence upon a believer's journey is their own peculiar faith trajectory, their biases, and what they think when no confrontation is present. Conflicting data usually ends up just being smoothed over by the most common biases, such as the backfire effect and the psychology of cognitive dissonance. I think that when in conflict, the themes discussed tend to acquire a "Somebody Else's Problem" field around them, and the believer discounts that the conflicting information has any applicability or relevance to them and their beliefs.