How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion

[Anomalocaris]

Unfortunately, so long as the religious belief thrives, there will always be religious people who will thwart societal progress because they feel it is their moral imperative to inform others how they must live. So long as there is religious belief, there will always be suffering and violence directly caused by those religious beliefs.

The flaw in this position is there is no provision in your arguments for showing that without religion, there would be fewer people who would do these things, or they would do them less effectively.

It may very well be true, but it is sufficiently vital to your argument that you can't gain traction with your argument by simply assuming it to be true.

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There is no reasonable argument in favor of religious belief. It makes me feel good or It brings me comfort are mere irrational excuses to maintain a hold on that which is absolutely unnecessary.

There are. 1) placebo effect. 2) social cohesion via common reference. You can say the reference is false, but alternative references that have tended to replace it, such as nationalism, tend also to be based heavily on mythology.

To encourage religion and religious beliefs is to encourage ignorance and a destructive future.

True. But many societies that have argued against ignorance steming from traditional religion have also found it necessary to replace that ignorance with another based on something which is religious in all but name.