While I'm neiter a materialist nor a Christian, and strongly disagree with a lot of ideas held by the proponents of these two positions, sometimes I still have to defend them a little bit - in the cases when the criticism becomes too hot.
They become, respectively, an organized dogmatic religion and an organized dogmatic ideology - the cornerstones for the theocratic and ideocratic oppression.
And, being protected from criticism - and, therefore, from necessary change - they lost their original spiritual and philosophical roots.
The only way to self-revival for them is to deinstitutionalize themselves, embrace the deserved criticism and undergo changes.
I agree with everything you contend here Vortex. There exists a difference between a cultural ideology and a that of an enforced doctrine from a position of power. History has shown us that enforced doctrines only die with the people who enforce them. The resident institutionalists are not changed from within, they are replaced. Libya's spread of arms and insurrection throughout West Africa could not be met with reason or common understanding. They viewed themselves as re-establishing an old Empire, which was lost through Western treachery - nothing was going to stop them in their rational and club-peer-reviewed quest. Aspirations of institutional control, arrogance and celebrity promoted disdain, are the warning flags of intransigence. They constitute a hot fight. Such is the state of things, and not an individual creation.
But to those who are the proselytized, those who are the young minds undergoing the indoctrination, the ultimate depravity of such institutions must be made clearly manifest, BEFORE their minds are lost to the indoctrination. This is crucial. In this regard, our limited lifespans and the necessity to continually re-educate as if a snake shedding its skin with each succeeding generation, based upon the stark reality that we will one day die, should be cited as THE single most effective step in the scientific method. Mollycoddling of institutions is a game they play with YOU, and not one of you influencing them. Our uber-religious and our uber-null-set skeptic institutions will not change. They will simply die. In the meantime, I refuse to allow either one the luxury of pretense of representing God or Science - before those who are not yet indoctrinated into their club.
This aspect is more certainly a cold fight.
While I do my work, I have made it a habit to study honestly, the local religion and history of each culture into which I immerse myself, so that I can gain an empathic understanding of some of the mindset of the local populace before we begin work on their behalf. I have sat in morning reflection with PhD's in Nuclear Physics while they sought the bestowal of Ganesha. I have sat quietly honoring evening prayers with senior governmental officials in their obedience to Allah. I have spent decades in the Middle East, India and China, Anatolia/Caucasia, Europe and Africa. The diversity of religious thought throughout the world is staggering. This being so pronounced, that the state exists wherein even religions comprised in name are so divergent in teaching so as to be unrecognizable in comparison to the root doctrines (Sub-Saharan Islam, Tamil Hindi, or Caribbe Catholicism come to mind). Material Null Set ontologies constitute a religion, no different than the panoply of philosophies practiced across the globe.
That which constitutes a 'religion' is not simply defined by a doctrine of venerating a personified deity; much less the Christian God. This is the weakness of atheism, such that it renders the philosophy almost moot, in that it does not recognize that religion is so much more than the simple regard of deities. That constrained argument set is simply an artifice, a constraint manufactured by our Western academic heritage. It is a surreptitious presumption, slipped by to force a bifurcation fallacy of argument. It should be met with a refusal to surrender such ground
a priori. Validly, there exist religions of philosophy, religions of ethic, and religions of ontology. Each is an institution, unique, cultural, and actually carries merit in some aspect of its teachings, including materialism and atheism. Even the proto-religions such as the Anatolian-Chinese Chang'e or Kabbalah, carry messages of culture, insight and value.
Until they become an institution of power. Once under such provision they then begin to weave into the target culture a barely perceptible fabric of enforcement corruption, and self preservation. An undercurrent of personally justified bias which in itself constitutes more evil than the good that they contribute.
Several years ago, I was asked to strike an alliance between three tribal leaders, who had sat in opposition to national policies, under which they believed that only competing tribes would benefit. I drove in a dusty green Subaru to each dwelling - to sit with them in the dark after evening prayers. By coming to them humbly in the middle of the night, meeting their wives and children, and sitting with them in the non-electrified dark, during the evening prayer - they gained a trust - a trust that I did not sit in judgement of their state or ontology. I was not there to hand them a new religion. This trust allowed our group to ally three tribal leaders separated since 1280 ad. To stop the flow of arms, to begin to focus on what lay before them in terms of cooperation, and to ultimately coax the children, not the adults, into abandoning the dogma which was ultimately the cause of the trouble. They had assembled practices and cultural re-enforcements which ensured that everyone walked the line of division. The corruption of thinking was imperceptible to the participants. The outcome of this slight corruption of thinking was enormous suffering.
But the children did not seek institution nor empire, until they were taught such goals. They did not regard outsiders as stupid, or irrational, or evil, or hated by god, or not sufficiently educated, or not in the peer review club, or not the great unwashed who do not follow the scientific method.
They humbly bore the manifest concern for the plight of their fellow tribes-people.
To the 'children' who humbly sit in wonder and ask the core questions of sincerity, we must provide every avenue of support in their quest to seek such answers. But to the institutional empires seeking to enforce their religion, through an arrogant disdain for any who are not in the club, holding up a mirror so that those pondering new status as initiates will be able to see the doctrinal cloth they will be donning, is our best weapon against just such an entity; one whom will never change, until the individuals pass on and are replaced from the inside out.