Is atheism a liberating and good experience?

[TaraJo]

What, an extremist political movement exploiting Islamic fundamentalism to gain recruits is suddenly and inextricably a religious problem?

Yeah, exactly. Because it's damn hard to convince people to fly airplanes into buildings without getting them to believe there's a reward in the afterlife.

Besides the fact that it's nearly impossible to get someone to kill themselves in the name of no-god and the fact that it's so easy to get the devoutly religious to do some damn crazy things (Christians are guilty of this as well, not just Muslims). See, saying 'God wills it' protects your argument from logic or reason. You could turn around and say 'Maybe flying airplanes into buildings isn't going to help our political cause' and the response is that you're questioning god. Maybe you could say 'I'd rather find a way to continue serving god after this attack, so I'm not ok with a suicide attack' and the response is that you're questioning god. You could say 'Know what? I think you catch more flies with honey than vinegar' at which point they accuse you of questioning god. Do you see a pattern here, Vinny?

Off the top of my head, the only time I've seen that level of blind faith in strictly atheistic institutions was the soviet takeover of Russia an eastern Europe, but all they did was change the philosophy slightly: instead of blind fath and allegiance to god, they promoted blind faith and allegiance to the state. Either way, that kind of blind, unquestioning faith is extremely dangerous, whether it's from secular or theistic sources. The problem with religion is that so much of what they tell us encourages blind faith.