Condor Says, "I challenge you to consider that this thing you're blaming on religion
"...have been used by our oppressors to create ideologies of obedience and to divide and conquer the people" isn't really inherent to spiritual beliefs, but to class. Fight the real enemy."

Actually this was exactly the point I was making. Our class oppressors use religion against us in the ways I pointed out. The promotion of scientific knowledge and atheism are important antidotes to people being misled by the religious hierarchies working for the capitalist class.

I put theism in the same categories as aliens creating crop circles and big foot, all ideas of man that have no evidence to back them up.

No my parents did not force feed me religion, but I have come across plenty of people like you who consider me "a strange bird" for my atheism. You complain that atheists are too in your face but I've found the opposite. Most atheists are a pretty quiet bunch about what they know, even in the face of insults from bible thumping Christians or new age spiritualists and multi-theists.

So you say, "Enlightenment comes only from knowing you're just a pebble on a beach." Call me too linear in my thinking, but my enlightenment includes the fact that I am not just a pebble on the beach, I am a living organism that has taken four billion years to evolve and unfortunately I'm not on the beach at the moment, but now that you mention it perhaps I will take trip there now.