The Road to a Secular Society

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
-- Bertrand Russell

"The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known."
-- John Stuart Mill

The Road to a Secular Society, or How to go About Persuading Society to Renounce Religion:

Religion is not concerned with truth. Reason alone can not sway a belief that is not based on reason. So to change the society's beliefs, it is necessary to promote freedom from religion just as freedom from slavery was promoted--though eclectic means. The following four steps serve as a:

• Plan of action. (enable action)
• Call for action. (motivate action)

1. Promote reason.
1. Raise the stakes of reason. Encourage people to value evidence-based reason over private feeling.
1. Steer the educational system to teach critical thinking and that reason is the only means of arriving at truth.
2. Have respectable people promote reason to raise the prestige of being rational.
2. Make a strong case against religion. Make it absolutely clear that religion is irrational, contradicts reason, and harmful.
1. Create and expose the disadvantages that religion brings, i.e., hinders scientific progress (especially stem-cell research and evolution), opposes LGBT political causes (especially same-sex marriage), anti-abortion, indoctrinates of children, supports unhealthy practices (especially the abstinence-only sex education), and the inability of a non-believer to hold high U.S. political office, etc.
   
2. Raise awareness.
   
1. Have non-religious people voice their opinions through books (such as Letter to a Christian Nation), movies (such as Religulous), music (such as John Lennon - Imagine), public discussions (such as at parties), and through interactions with those around us (such as casual conversations with friends and family), etc.
   
2. Realize and expose the problems that religion brings (to make it less respectable). Popularize the arguments against religion and the faults of arguments for religion.
3. Enable, empower and motivate non-religious people to advocate against religion.
1. Enable. Provide and distribute the arguments against religion. Provide a means for non-believers to voice their beliefs (through organizations such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation)
   
2. Empower. Emphasize the large number of people who share their views (16.1% are unaffiliated with any particular faith in the US, which is the largest group after Protestants, with 51.3%, and Catholics, with 23.9%, and among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion). Create supportive communities and regular gatherings for the non-believers.
3. Motivate. Lower the bar for religious tolerance to make way for action by emphasizing that inaction in the face of irrationality and assault on reason is contributing to the injustice.
4. Make it comfortable and desirable for religious people to doubt and reject their faith, so that they don't feel like they are losing by rejecting their beliefs.
1. Comfortable. De-stigmatize atheism. Show that atheism is a sign of open-mindedness.
   
2. Desirable. Popularize the problems with religion. Show that atheism is a prestigious position.

Daniel Dennett - Breaking the Spell
Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great
Sam Harris - The End of Faith
Sam Harris - Letter to a Christian Nation
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
Mark Twain - Letters from the Earth
Carl Sagan - The Varieties of Scientific Experience
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion
Dan Barker - Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
Bertrand Russell - Why I Am Not a Christian
Bill Maher - Religulous (film)

http://religions.pewforum.org/reports