"But…haven’t non-atheists"
You mean theist?

You should change your monicker to "Not-non-atheist Libertarian"

And that is the problem. So many religious based hospitals that won't offer medical services to people because of religious hiccups.

"I understand that people who do not pray still do things, but does prayer exclude action? "

In most cases, Yes. Religious people tend to believe that if they pray, then they have done their best, and now can go on with their life guilt free. Two hands working can do a lot more then a thousand hands clasped in prayer.

" 'An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.'
What does this even mean?"

Really? You can't comprehend what that means?

An Atheist is more focused on how to improve life while we are still living, while religious people focus on how they can gain brownie points for the after life.

" 'He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.'

Putting the exclusionary pronoun aside — no gender-warrior, here "

Jesus Christ, STFU.

"is this line suggesting that only the atheist wants disease conquered, poverty banished and war eliminated?"

Not at all, but seeing how the majority of wars are fought over religion, and how churches claim to care about the poor yet do little to nothing to help, while they sit on tax free income, and how, as mentioned above, religious hospitals care more about what their imaginary friend might think rather then the medical needs of the patient. I'd have to say this quote hits the nail right on the head.

"But…haven’t non-atheists"

You mean theist?

"worked for centuries and millenia toward those goals?"

Nope. If they were, then it would have been achieved by now.

Joe,
You might try reading what I said and not responding to what you imagine me to have said. I said a hospital is generally considered more useful than a church by atheists. I think this is probably objectively true too, given a hospital can serve a plurality of people without any sectarian disputes. I'll take a secular hospital welcoming to the masses vs an ideological Catholic institution that may deny me or my loved one critical medical care based on specific interpretations of ancient texts or the pronouncements of allegedly infallible people.

Also, I doubt very much that Church orgs fund, wholly, any hospital effort. They will get help from city and state, and will probably do local fund drives. The RCC could sell a lot of its costumes, and its riches and build any large number of hospitals I imagine. A great deal of church wealth goes toward propping up its opulent facade. I know there are many who are deeply impressed with Christian charity. But much of it looks like political fundraising that has a minor humanitarian arm.

Prayer is certainly useless to everyone except the person praying, who probably derives some gratification from the act.

It is strange that many Christians want to claim credit for science, while conveniently neglecting how often and ferociously Christianity has railed agains its findings and its researchers throughout history.

Also charity isn't unique to Christianity.

Michael the argument was that Christianity retarded human progress when it clearly was essential to the existence of the various goods claimed by atheist secularism for itself. It clearly is the case that if someone wants to grow a flower they will care about what works to bring that about - they will care about the utility value of water, nutrients, CO2 and light. Of course crucifixion has limited 'utility' value by worldly standards, and Christ Himself said that "they will persecute you on my account" "the world hates you, but be of good cheer, for they hated me first". But if we want institutions of care and concern to survive we will want to understand their origins. We live on the cut-flower of Christian culture and it is withering rapidly.

(and if that was the case, how do people explain polls that suggest around 50% of people in the US accept a 6000 year old earth?).

The US is unusual in these respects.

Maybe not, but if atheism ever becomes the majority position, I don't think anyone will bother calling it atheism. It would be like me labelling my politics as non-Benthamite or anti-Whig.

I agree completely.

Indifferent people won't be building atheism benches, I think.

Neither would I. I don't understand atheism benches or atheism Sunday services.

I'm pretty sure atheists are and always have been in the minority. I think it's very likely that the number of atheists is higher than the polls show. But it would have to be about 10 times higher in order for atheists to be the majority (and if that was the case, how do people explain polls that suggest around 50% of people in the US accept a 6000 year old earth?).

Will atheists always be a minority? Maybe not, but if atheism ever becomes the majority position, I don't think anyone will bother calling it atheism. It would be like me labelling my politics as non-Benthamite or anti-Whig.

Maybe in the future more people will be indifferent. I'm very indifferent: agnostic is too strong a commitment for me. I'm not even that. Indifferent people won't be building atheism benches, I think. The people who do this sort of thing are almost certainly a minority.

Neither of us can be entirely indifferent, or else we wouldn't be commenting here.

The utility of Christianity tells us nothing about it's truth.

Dr Oz Guinness has a talk online somewhere about just what the Christian revolution brought to the world, and David Bentley Hart's 'Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies' is a recent work.

It beggars belief that it can be seriously contended that the anthropology brought to the ancient world by Jesus Christ has been of no account or of negative value. The idea that the institutions of care (The parable of the Good Samaritan: the parable that changed the world; "with the Bible we can now look the white man in the eye" from Guinness talk) and the project of institutional science are all born in Christian soil. The only possible position (though still strains credulity) is that Christianity was some kind of booster rocket, lifting humanity into a developmental stage that now no longer needs it. Immediate rejoinder is how mechanical and artificial that analogy is, where seed, soil and flowering better corresponds to the organic dynamism of human culture and development.

As Lezsek Kolakowski (former Marxist) wrote "

[Christianity’s] strength in this interpretation is
manifested in its ability to build a barrier against hatred in the consciousness of individuals “as we forgive those who trespass against us”. This challenge thrown down to human nature remains. If Christians are to be found only among those who know how to meet this challenge, who are disciples of Jesus in the sense that they do not escape from the struggle, but are free from hatred – how many have there been, and how many are there now in the world? I do not know. I do not know whether there were more in the Middle Ages than there are now. However many there are, they are the salt of the earth, and European civilization would be a desert without them.
Modernity on Endless Trial

The decline in the quality of atheism is appalling and deeply foreboding because the varieties popular today are a function of the banality of much Christianity - e.g. various megachurch "bourgeois first, Christian second, churches. ?

That's Spinoza's reason atheists are always the minority

Do you think they are ? I know that people tick the box of a religion in census forms and the RCC likes to count anyone baptised as Catholic as one of the flock. But I suspect the number of atheists or apatheists is far higher than we think. At least outside the US. Look at how people actually behave (count them by the fruits of their labours):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(law)#Extramarital_births

or look at what Census Christians really believe:

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/644941-rdfrs-uk-ipsos-mori-poll-1-how-religious-are-uk-christians

My feeling is the future holds an increasing indifference to both theism and atheism bought on by the lack of relevance of religion to modern lives.