It’s utterly untrue that atheists promote thinking and questioning. The word “atheist” means someone who believes that it isn’t possible for a deity to exist. Atheists can’t actually prove in a scientific manner that god doesn’t exist (well, if something doesn’t exist you can’t very well find proof of it, can you?) so instead they say to believers “The onus is on you to prove that god does exist, because you’re the ones making the claim! Ah ha!”
A bit of logical thinking will, of course, lead one to the conclusion that a believer obviously can’t hope to prove the existence of god to someone who doesn’t believe it’s possible for one to exist. That’s usually the part where the atheist gets all huffy, and the believer becomes self-righteous.

Tell me, how exactly does this promote thinking and questioning? It’s just absurd.

We have to start somewhere. How then, would you suggest logical thinking should be promoted? Do you actually believe a “God” jerked off in heaven and spent his load into a virgin mother to make a clone of himself to kill himself to “die for our sins” which he made in the first place? If he is omnipotent and omniscient, then why is there a need for churches and priests? Do you believe in ancient gods, such as the Egyptian gods, Greek gods, and the like? If not, then what makes the present religion significant? It really is the same old crap just refurbished and changed a little here and a little there. I live in a highly religious community and have Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and so on knocking on my door all of the time early in the morning trying to convert me to their religion. You don’t see atheists doing that. I try to have intelligent conversations about the subject with believers, but the intelligent part stops with me when conversing. When facts about their bible are presented, such as stoning your kids to death, often times I am called a liar. It is in the old testament and most of the “hardcore” believers have no idea it is there. Why is this so? The reason why is because it is bashed into people’s brains from an early age, and most of them never read the bible. They only hear the good parts in church. No one ever quotes the bible verses about stoning, polygamy, or anything of that nature. Instead, you hear stuff like loving god, caring god, and so on. Why then would a loving, caring god instruct Moses to slaughter people? I don’t care what those people did, no one deserves to be slaughtered (oh and women raped, while children are enslaved, can’t forget that great stuff).

Defending religion is completely and totally ludicrous. Atheist promote thinking and questioning. Is that really such a bad thing?