Quality is a highly subjective measurement. I'm sure the Christians think their kids are high quality, just as every parent does. It is quantity that dilutes the rest of the gene pool and wins elections though. The fact is that their combined errors arguably result in a better evolutionary strategy than supposedly getting it right.

As a Hare Krsna I was taught a fundamental principle that worldly pleasure is the chief obstacle to spiritual living. I had a friend with a t-shirt that said, "Sex is death."

Also, most people have heard of hatha yoga, but hatha is the first half of a system that continues with raja yoga. Raja yoga is four steps beginning with pratyahara, meaning to withdraw the mind from the senses. That means to not think about objects in the world, and it allows development of the next three steps, which are concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and then enlightenment (samadhi).

Simply put, thinking about worldly things prevents the mind from thinking about what purportedly transcends the world. Sex is considered the chief thought that leads people around like the ring in the nose of a bull.

The other aspect of this, and which is probably more relevant to atheists, is the fact that the failure of abstinence in limiting reproduction is a tremendous evolutionary win for religion. If religious people are having five or ten kids per mother and atheists are having zero or one, then they are filling the gene pool with their DNA. (It may be repulsive to say "God hates gays," but it's notable that they are largely excluded from the gene pool.) Since that is what survival of the fittest practically means, and is therefore a principle goal of life if we accept evolutionary theory, then the religious delusion is also highly rational in that it achieves a high rate of human reproduction.

Well, you don't know me, but i may be at fault for not being perfectly on topic. Maybe you're confused because i was raised to be a Christian but became disbeliever in high school and a then after college a Hare Krsna but am now again in doubt.

Obviously I did not have your worldview; I had mine, and it's perfectly natural to teach that to one's children. With my kids it was never the Bible (which I was taught was a misguided attempt to reconstruct religion after the war at Kuruksetra), it was Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, et al. Basically the texts here: <a href="http://Www.Vedabase.net" target="_blank">Www.Vedabase.net We would say Bhagavatam was God in the form of a book. It would be simple: want to know God, just read. I thought the Vedas were clear proof of God. It had taken me one week to see God face to face after beginning to study Bhagavad gita (though after years of preparation) and so that seemed like proof enough to me. Then I found there was a worldwide cult of believers even more into it than me. My reality was thoroughly changed, and yet after fifteen years of it i had to admit to myself and everyone that it could all be imaginary.

I was brought up as a liberal Catholic but high school science made religion seem wrong. My university education was science, but i thought perhaps i could gain insight about the world by self awareness and attempted to perfect a yoga practice to achieve that. when i graduated i moved across the country to where i planned to sit alone and fast, but i happened to buy a used Bhagavad gita as it is and after a week i had a vision of Krsna that seemed very real and wonderful. I joined the Hare Krishna cult and that was completely my reality. I considered anyone who did not accept Krsna as God to be an atheist, and that meant having one's intelligence in illusion. The Bible is designated as a scripture of the meat eaters, and Bhagavatam says meat eaters can't understand God. http://vedabase.net/sb/10/1/4/en

I wonder how well atheists can understand how much religious belief can define a person's life and how difficult it can be to resist or give up. I'm trying to do that but so far i have yet to connect with anyone in the reality based community who seems to understand the power of brainwashing in the Hare Krsna community.

i never forced anyone to believe anything, but i fully believed and so naturally taught that. mostly it did not transfer to them, and i did not worry much about it. my own devotional activities would have been sufficient to deliver not only myself but three generations before and after, according to what the Vedas say about it, so i did not feel too pressured on their behalf.

the spiritual world view i had could really contain the materialistic, and so it was easier to believe the spiritual than to disbelieve it. for me it was based on a mystical vision of Krsna that i had, and the fact that i was able to later find in the Vedas to nearly all He had taught me. my disbelief is due to immoral behavior of His followers and His subsequent non-intervention, which really isn't proof but which is good enough for me right now.

My faith may have been influenced by childhood teachings, but.my adult religion was quite different from my parents', and i was moderately atheistic in between. i was completely convinced of my religion for fifteen years as an adult, and i could explain it in ways that surely seemed coherent to me, even though i already had a scientific degree. so why would i not teach that to my kids? it made more sense to me than my science education, considering my sometimes amazing life experiences.

As i considered things, atheism was offensive to God and caused people to miss the goal of life. Here is one verse from the Vedas saying that everything about the goodness of a person depends upon devotion to God:
http://vedabase.net/sb/5/18/12/
"All the demigods and their exalted qualities, such as religion, knowledge and renunciation, become manifest in the body of one who has developed unalloyed devotion for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vāsudeva. On the other hand, a person devoid of devotional service and engaged in material activities has no good qualities. Even if he is adept at the practice of mystic yoga or the honest endeavor of maintaining his family and relatives, he must be driven by his own mental speculations and must engage in the service of the Lord's external energy. How can there be any good qualities in such a man?"

I should add that i left religion after fifteen years of fundamentalist Vaisnavism, largely because sick corruption in that society (ISKCON) made it impossible for me to continue believing that verse.

In the bhakti traditions it is taught that the purpose of prayer is not to request a material gift but simply to speak to God with the desire to cultivate a loving relationship. The prayer I chanted for fifteen years was a simple request for Krsna to accept me in His service. Prayer is an attempt at communication, which is not at all extraneous to developing a relationship. How can there be a relationship without communication?

Whether there is a real God listening and saying things back is another question (and for the past year or so I've been moving over to the atheist side of the argument, but I'm not sure if it's real or just to piss off Krsna for being such a failure in the God role, lol), but the bhakti view of prayer is not represented in the flow chart, which seems like somewhat of a straw man or picking on what I always saw as the bottom of the barrel of religion.