I was born into an Islamic family (though we're American, not middle eastern) and was very religious for the first 24 or 25 years of my life. I went from being a hardcore defender of Islam IRL and on the net (on sites like faithfreedom.org for example) to well, being an anti theist. The way it happened -- what worked and what didn't is what I wanna talk about real quick.

I think Islam gets a much stronger hold on your brain than the other religions do because of the way it's setup. The way I used to think was off the wall. If you were too stupid to understand and see the truth then you can die. Yea, it's that bad. So no amount of logic you threw at me would make contact. A wall gets put up that shields you from rationale but buried deep down in all (Some? Most?) of us is a logic bean. That mother fucker can grow if you let it but what happens in religion is as it starts to grow you start to ask questions. Asking questions pretty much means you at least have a tiny tiny tiny bit of doubt. Doubt is the devil fucking with you or you being tested. See how that works? Rationale is bad.

What really fucks you up is when people try to help you grow your logic tree. Everyone's fertilizer ends up fucking up your seed. Their fertilizer also somehow makes great bricks to reenforce your rationale-blocking wall. After debating on Faithfreedom.org for a while (and in hindsight probably being bombarded with too much logic) I just left. And here's the kicker: I left being MORE faithful. wtf right?

So, point #1: dissin' someone's belief and/or simply trying to make them see the light can often do more harm than good. Humans are stupid.

Everyone has a tiny seed somewhere in them. For me it was free-will. In Islam it's believed that God makes some humans as fuel for the hell fire. God puts a lock on their hearts that prevents them from seeing the right path. They have free-will but no matter what they do they will always make bad choices that leads them to sin and causes them to go to hell. That shit doesn't make sense.

So that was my little seed that had been buried deep just chillin' for years. How it grew, I have no idea, but it did. When it did I got this huge urge to learn shit. I was an evolution denier for obvious reasons but I got curious if scientists really believe it and why. So I started reading about it and when I did, bam, atheist.

Point #2: The most hardcore of believers can't be reasoned by others out of their irrational belief but CAN realize that their beliefs are irrational and leave them. But it has to come from within.

So now that I've been there I'm starting to understand how I can go about helping others realize that they believe in bullshit. The best way, so far, seems to not even bring up religion or their beliefs but randomly throw logic and science out there.

For example:

Post an awesome video on facebook that doesn't diss their God but makes a good point and tell your friends, including the religious ones of course, to check it out. I think that one with Neil Tyson at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference may be a good one but I can't remember if he openly disses religion. Maybe edit it to just show the part where he explains how every time a smart guy got to the top of his game, or got lazy, he said God did it and it stayed like that until someone came along and 1up'ed him...and then ended up doing the same thing. Hmmm, maybe that's too much at first. Especially if they're typical theists and aren't very intelligent or interested in science. But yea, just post an awesome video and tell mother fuckers to watch it. Bring up something awesome in a conversation in person. Like, "So dude, I was thinking about how the universe could come from nothing the other day. Like, it seems everything has to have a beginning and come from something right? But it turns out shit pops in and out of existence all the time on the quantum scale. I was like whoa, this shit is crazy. So I started watching all these videos from science conferences and what not and it turns out, it's entirely possible that the universe could have come from nothing, or that it's always been. You should check it out." They'll may reply with something like, "Psh, God did it dude." In which case you reply with, "The science behind the universe, how it works, how it started, it's all still crazy though. You should check it out."

Or something like, "So I realized faith means believing in something without evidence or proof and I'm like, why do we do that? We wouldn't let a random group of folks operate on us just because they said they were doctors and we wouldn't believe them if they said they could fly without showing us. But we're always believing other stuff without evidence or proof." They may say, "Like what?" and you can say "Like God for example." and see where the convo goes.

If you can you should probably pretend, only as far as you have to, to believe what they believe. They'll be more open to check shit out with you if they think you're not trying to de-convert them and you're on their side. Give it some time and you'll notice them start asking their own questions.

Keep doing stuff like this and at some point in your friends' lives they'll start to get curious.

Point #3: The best way to help your friends de-convert seems to be just throwing out random logic and science while pretending to be on their side.

There's a lot more I wanna say but my daughter has come bugging me to watch Toy Story 3 so that's all for now.

tl;dr: I was a hardcore religious maniac that realized religion is bs, dissin' a person's religion or showing them logic only reenforces their belief and the best way to help de-convert your friends is never bring up their religion and show them random logic and science -- pretending to be on their side while doing it helps a ton. Oh, and it's possible for the most religious of religious people to stop being religious.

Damn that was a long ass tl;dr.