Why arguing about God is stupid

The following was written in response to this comment on why the God debate is important:

Whether you like it or not, belief has impact upon peoples' actions. And incorrect beliefs frequently lead to harm. I don't see why you should consider it such a crime to fight ignorance wherever it festers.

Fundamentally, I agree with you. However, it's a question of relevance. I would work to reduce fanaticism in general before touching the question of God's existence. It's not like being an atheist somehow makes one any less extreme. You can be godless and still think that there is an alien spaceship hiding in the tail of a comet. Again, the suppression of religion in China has only moderately dampened superstitious beliefs. Plus, God's existence will always be unprovable one way or another, and clearly living a good life is fairly independent of the question. Just because this belief isn't necessary, doesn't mean that having it is a terrible thing. In other words, thinking that arguing about God's existence will make the world a significantly better place is itself an incorrect belief.

If I were you, I'd stop wasting my time with this distraction, and put my efforts into tackling problems that actually matter. For example, one might study the social dynamics of Islamic/Christian extremism/nationalism, try to find a workable solution, and then actually do something. Note that telling these people to simply stop believing in God is not a solution, because they would never agree with you, for one. Moreover, it would do almost nothing to resolve their conflicts, since most of them have a highly economic or political basis anyways. In short, don't bother trying to change a person's fundamental beliefs. Instead, teach them how to live productively and peacefully, regardless of the abstractions they happen to prefer.

Personally, I think this strategy will yield far better results than the one you depict. After all, a question who's answer is fairly irrelevant has no significantly wrong answers. The worst thing you can do with religion is to think it really matters, because then you give power to those that would manipulate it. You can't really affect a person using an idea they don't take very seriously. Thus, faith wouldn't be such a problem, if only people treated it like it wasn't a problem.