A comment to the Catholics

"You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind." 

This is from who you are talking about. He points out that ritual, sacrament and dogma stifle the search for knowledge. As a result, sacred cows have to be eliminated when they are no longer useful. Catholic sacred cows lost their usefulness hundreds of years ago, in my opinion. It is wishful thinking that there is an afterlife, this is it, and if you look, what is here is paradise if you strive to make it so. What is here is extremely beautiful if you look at it instead of imagining another place nicer. It is hugely frustrating to see the wasted intellect, effort, and human suffering in the worship of the imaginary. That is why you are seeing the ridicule and derision welling up from the atheist community. We are tired of it. We don't want to help pay for it any more. We don't have to respect the religion and superstitions, only the people.  

I am getting on an airplane tomorrow to visit my family, an airplane designed by men and women with no assistance from the imaginary, flying without the assistance of the imaginary, over the mountains created by natural forces, to my family who I love and know love me. All of it naturally occurring without the imaginary. All of it beautifully complex and simple. All of it understood without faith.