Religious people have you ever tried praying?

[Esquilax]

Not all atheists fall into the above category, but a lot do. I used to be an atheist. I've known plenty of them. I think a compassionate approach to advocacy for the atheist position is to realize that you are not only selling people an idea of more pure approach to thinking about the world, you are telling them that they are free to do whatever they want, or at least severely weakening any theological distance between them and carnality.

Whoa, whoa: hold up, there. Free to do whatever we want? No, and I think you knew that before you typed the sentence. Atheism has a very detailed explanation for why we have morality and the uses thereof on a personal and sociological level (well, evolution and sociology does, but this atheist will patiently explain it if asked.). It is you theists that believe that people need to be taught what's right and wrong, and then constantly threatened or wheedled into behaving correctly. And that stuff about carnality... what's the real world harm of that, when done with care? Absent an immortal soul, what is the actual inherent harm in sex (for the purposes of argument, say safe sex that leads not to pregnancy or disease. We both know those things are bad, but religion takes issue with sex in general, not just the consequences of doing it unsafely.)

I think the problem here is that, when you think of the atheist position, you don't go far enough. You're still considering atheism through the lens of your religious beliefs; you can't see a way by which one can reach a moral setup without god, and therefore you don't think atheists can. But from an atheist setup, we can and have. You think carnality is bad because your god says so, but from an atheist position that god doesn't exist, and therefore the inherent immorality of sex is nonexistent.

If you are going to attempt a representation of atheism, at least be accurate in doing so.