Helping Christians to lose faith?

[Pyrrho]

Sometimes I wonder if I should be openly and vocally atheist in an effort to help my family and friends to lose faith.

Any ideas?
- My mother is 70 and I doubt if she would ever lose faith, but I could be surprised. I try to pretend to believe a little bit for her sake. Her beliefs are somewhat fundamentalist and also somewhat superstitious (Eastern Orthodox)
- My brother and his family believe similarly to my mother except less strongly.
- My sister and her husband are Lutherans.

I feel bad leaving them to believe nonsense when I might be able to help them - especially my brother and sister. On the other hand, it could create a big mess.

Without knowing the specifics of your situation, it is hard to recommend a course of action.

Remember, though, that you cannot control what other people believe.  The most one can do is influence someone, but that isn't the same at all.

Many years ago, without me knowing it at the time, my mother asked one of my brothers to talk with me about religion, because she thought I was straying from my Christian upbringing.  (I never declared I was an atheist, but I said some things that were not in keeping with blind faith and obedience to what I had been told.)  So my brother did.  Whenever he would bring up the subject of religion, I would talk with him, but I spoke with him in a disinterested way, not about what I believe personally.  I would ask questions and bring up all sorts of troublesome issues that were relevant to whatever religious idea he happened to bring up.  Of course, he had no answer for many of the problems of Christianity, because there is no way of making it all make sense.  So when hitting an impasse, that would tend to shut him up for a while.  Of course, some days later, he would be talking about some other aspect of religion, and I would engage him as before.  But I did not initiate any of the conversations on religion; I merely reacted to whatever it was that he brought up.  Over time, the result was that he no longer believed in religion and is now an atheist.

So, if any of them talk with you about religion, go ahead and engage them, if you wish.  I recommend a disinterested approach, and to let the conversation die whenever they want it to.  But, of course, you know your family better than I do (since I do not know them at all), and so you must decide for yourself how you want to be and what you want to do.