"It isn't like what I write here is persuading anyone who uses social media primarily to insult others not to do so. And it isn't like anything I have said about reason or freethought is getting through to those who would most benefit from it."

I wouldn't be so sure about that, but the value I see in your posts isn't only in the possibility of changing people's minds. It's also, and maybe even more, in the encouragement and support it provides to people who are being oppressed and repressed in the names of religion, feminism, diversity and social justice; and to people who are working for social change. I personally know of one person that you've encouraged and supported that way.

I've never stopped to think before about how my life, and my efforts to improve myself and help improve the world, have been enriched by reading your posts, but now that I am thinking about it, I see that the benefits for me have been dramatic. I wouldn't know where to start, or be able to count the ways, or find words to explain most of it, but I'll list a few examples.

1. It has helped me free myself completely from any attachment to believing in the reality or existence of God, with multiple benefits for my purposes.

2. It has helped me in multiple ways to clarify for myself what I want to do about social issues, online and offline, and how, and to clarify my ways of thinking about some other things.

3. You helped awaken me to the issues of scapegoat feminism and social justice, and to the growing and spreading corruption and totalitarianism in public institutions; and learning about those has given me some valuable new ideas about how I can improve myself and help improve the world.

Those are just a few of the many ways that reading your posts has enriched my life, and my efforts to improve myself and help improve the world.

I don't mean to discourage you from taking a break from the Internet. I know you've already done that before, so you've already seen some of the benefits, and every time you do it you might see more. It's even possible that you could do the world more good if you give up online work altogether and devote yourself completely to offline work, but I doubt it. It seems more likely to me that some combination of offline and online work will make the best use of your capacities.

A one-week break might not be enough to really see the benefits, but it might not need to be a whole month. I would suggest three weeks or more.

I've had to take breaks sometimes, because I haven't found any other way to keep Internet discussions from taking over my life so much that it seriously incapacitates me in the rest of my life. Sometimes I take a break for months, and currently I'm trying to suspend all my online activities except for socializing with friends and family members on Facebook, and occasional visits to this blog and a few others, and a few forums. Yeah. :)

Recently I got caught up in some discussions on Twitter and Reddit, about Candace Owens and her Social Action project, but I think I'm over that now. I hope.

I haven't been following you much recently, but I thought about you this morning, and decided to take a look. I'm glad I did. I like this very much. I needed that just now.

Jack, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that if I'm going to be commenting continually on a blog, I should introduce myself, better than I have been doing. Just now it occurred to me that I should do that here. I'll send you a private message about it.

You might understand those experiences better than you think, but what I want to say about that, I'd rather say privately. I'll send you a private message.

You could probably have guessed that I would agree with you wholeheartedly that less religion might not lead to as much improvement in society as people might sometimes think. That might depend on how it happens. For example, I think the more it happens as a result of healthy and responsible thinking, the more it will be paralleled by improvements in society and in the lives of all people, but that will be a result of healthy and responsible thinking, and not a result of people turning away from religion.

On the other hand, I think the more that anyone tries to turn people away from religion and belief in God by trying to discredit and defame religions and their followers, or by any other hostile attitudes and behaviors, the less that will do to help improve society, and the more it will do to help perpetuate and intensify our social problems, and make life harder for everyone.

It looks to me like all the harmful attitudes and behaviors that I see plaguing society, can be just as popular, just as easily, among people who have turned away from religion and belief in God, as they can among other people. I don't think that trying to turn people away from religion and belief in God does anything to help improve society.

That doesn't mean that I don't see any value in responsible criticism of some of the ideas and ways of thinking that are sometimes associated with religions and belief in God. It doesn't mean I don't see any value in denouncing harmful attitudes and behavior that are sometimes associated with religions and belief in God. I do see some value in all that, but I don't see any value in associating that with indiscriminate depreciation of all religion and belief in God. In fact, I think the more that criticism of religion displays indiscriminate depreciation of all religion and all belief in God, and ignorance of their virtues and value, the more it discredits, marginalizes and isolates itself, and undermines any good it might do.

After spending a few hours trying to explain that better, I realized that I've been thinking exactly the same way about what I call "growth economics ideology." For years I've been despising and demonizing growth economics theories, indiscriminately, because of how much I've seen them being used to excuse and camouflage massive, murderous campaigns of plundering and pillaging all over the world, without ever seeing them being used for any beneficial purposes. That helps me sympathize better with people campaigning against all religion and belief in God, which I can very well see as partners with growth economics, in that plundering and pillaging.

That doesn't mean I agree with depreciating all religion and belief in God, indiscriminately, any more than I ever have. It means I'm going to review and revise the ways I've been thinking about growth economics.

You said: "Therefore, the only reasonable position is atheism."

Possibly you meant that it's the only position that seems reasonable to you, not that it's the only reasonable position that anyone could have, and whatever you meant, you might feel differently now, but I have a question about that.

From some of your posts it looks to me like you've seen that it's perfectly possible, and maybe even common, for people to abandon their belief in God, without any more healthy and responsible thinking behind that than there is in anyone's belief in God. Does it seem plausible to you that some people's belief in God might be just as much a result of healthy and responsible thinking grounded in experience, as you or anyone else not believing in God?

I agree with what you're saying, if I think only of the world as I see it in media stories, and only of the factional, hostile, sensational kinds of activism that monopolize media attention. In the world as I've experienced it myself and heard about it in the experience of others, I've seen a lot of activism that does not rely on outrage, and there might actually be a lot more of that kind, than the kind that does rely on outrage. I also think that most of the credit for social changes that sometimes goes to the factional, hostile kinds of activism, actually belongs to some of those other kinds, that are rarely mentioned in news stories.

You wrote "... it seems to me that we are going to need to find some effective ways to motivate activism that are less reliant on outrage." If you aren't already planning to write a post about that, I hope you will.

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On another topic, I just did a search to see if you've ever written about the Clergy Project, or anything else about the dilemma of religious professionals whose beliefs no longer qualify them for their positions. I only found one post related to that, about Dan Barker, who was later one of the founders of the Clergy Project. Have you ever written anything else on those topics, or about atheism in the clergy in general?

It might interest you to know that in the Netherlands, it's possible for religious professionals to be openly atheist, without losing their jobs.

I don't see any reason to trust opinion polls at all, as a way of finding out what people think in the populations they allegedly represent, apart from the influence the polls themselves might have on popular thinking, and I see some good reasons *not* to trust them. In fact, I think they often mislead us about the ideas and interests of people in the populations they allegedly represent, in ways that help perpetuate and intensify prejudices, animosities and hostilities. I've been tempted a few times to cite opinion polls myself, in support of some argument, but I resist the temptation, because for me that would be dishonest and treacherous, considering what I think about them.

This post brought to mind something that's been on my mind a long time, about your posts: Sometimes I've seen you calling some specific beliefs "irrational," as if a belief can be irrational in itself, regardless of how anyone arrives at it, or even what they mean by it. Maybe you don't actually mean it that way. Do you? If not, what do you mean, when you call some specific beliefs "irrational"?

Stigmatizing some specific beliefs by calling them "irrational," seems to me to be detrimental to free thinking and free exchange of ideas. If the reason you're saying it is because all the reasons you've ever seen for those beliefs look irrational to you, it might be better to spell that out, or find some other way to abbreviate it, rather than calling the beliefs themselves "irrational."

I'm not saying never to stigmatize any beliefs, in any way. I'm not objecting to calling some beliefs "harmful" or "dangerous," in their consequences. My only objection here is to thinking of beliefs in themselves as rational or irrational. If I understand what you're promoting, it seems to me that it might be better for your purposes to restrict your use of those words to the reasoning behind people's beliefs, rather than applying them to the beliefs themselves.

I'm not sure you'd be interested in my feelings about this, but I'm not sure you wouldn't. They're very hard for me to describe. Reading the post, I just kept feeling warmer and warmer towards you, until I was almost in tears.

I'm trying to think of what else to say, to describe my feelings about this post, but I can't think of anything.

Human, I'm not sure that what I said in my comment, before I edited it, about the freedom to listen being undermined and assaulted, and about what we need to hear, is worth saying. In fact, it might even distract from what I was trying to say. I'll think about it some more, and if I think of anything to say about it that seems worth saying, I will.