Hello Cypress,
I agree with you. My apologies if I appeared to be conflating religion with Christianity. That was not my intent. I do see a lot of overlap because most of my experience with religion comes from Christians trying to push their religion on me. They do it both intentionally and out of habit. One very common instance of this is if I sneeze, I do not need to be blessed. I don't appreciate it. And I have struggled with how to respond to that. There doesn't seem to be a polite way to get my point across that a sneeze is a biological event and need not invoke an assumption of sharing religion.
There is no polite way to respond to that with: "keep your religion to yourself, thanks," "Ah go bless yourself," or "No thank you, I do not care to be blessed," or "Being blessed is meaningless to me, so you have just said something meaningless to me."
If an atheist tries to say anything at all to communicate the fact that they do not appreciate being blessed after sneezing, it comes off as rude. This is how presumptuous Christians can be. Like, if you don't share their religion there's something wrong with you.
Humans would not be so attracted to religion if they didn't have such a hard selling campaign going on. But since they do, it is a very logical assumption that religion will not be going away any time soon. One particularly irksome thing about religion is most of them command their subjects to have as many babies as possible. That's because most religious subjects are indoctrinated into the religion not by choice but by constant brainwashing during upbringing while they are most vulnerable to being told things that may not be true.
More babies in religious families ensures the religion will continue. The religion does not endure on merit alone, but by cult design.
Having too many babies is self-destructive for humanity. It may have begun back when there just weren't that many humans on the planet, and back then it was a good idea to have lots, but that time has passed. There are now too many humans on the planet, and religion has not changed to reflect that. The scriptures are never amended. That is a huge problem for religion. No wonder they say the meek shall inherit the Earth. Religions force it to happen by telling the poor to have too many babies.
The more modern the planet gets, the less relevant religion is; because it never changes.
Other than the extremely rare evangelical knocking on my door, I almost never experience Christians proselytizing me.
No one ever bugs me to go to church, even though there are practicing christians in my family.
I guess I just am not personally familiar with the fire-and-brimstone evangelical Protestantism other people experience.
I am just not having the same experiences as you, and therefore cannot agree that in-your-face prostilytizing is a huge issue nationally or universally.
I have run across some obnoxious bible thumper trolls on obscure message boards.
I agree that all genuine viewpoints on morality should be respected. And no one should be disparaged for being an atheist. I frequently post and write about comparative world religions and atheist intellectual thought, because it interests me.
I do not agree that religions never evolve.
Modern Rabbinic Judaism looks nothing like 1st century BCE Judaism.
Modern Christianity looks nothing like first century Christianity. Nobody can even agree on what the scriptures actually mean, and thus Christianity has evolved into traditions as disparate as Pentecostalism, Quakerism, and Unitarianism.
Buddhism has constantly evolved from the Theravada version, to the Mahayana, Zen, and Pure Land versions.
The third most important person in Christianity after Jesus and Paul (Saint Augustine) was very clear in writing that the metaphor and allegory in the Bible would always have to be reinterpreted on the basis of new knowledge about the world and the universe.
While Pentecostals scare me, on balance I do not see the practice of science being diametrically incompatible with the practice of Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism.
