Most of us grew up in families in which religion was simply part of our lives. We did not consciously choose it. Movement away from it was just a natural part of growing up, of establishing our emotional, intellectual, and moral independence.
But, when people, as mature adults, make a conscious choice to be ruled by absolute belief in and adherence to a religious dogma, they are choosing (1) the relinquishing of independent judgment (moral and intellectual) to the dogma and its professors, (2) superstition, magical thinking, and irrationality over the exercise of reason, (3) the foregoing of individual freedoms and rights, (4)arrested intellectual development in all areas in conflict with the dogma. In extreme cases, such as in much of evangelical Christianity and in other fundamentalistic religions, it even means acting in a knowingly immoral manner if the dogma and its leaders say that it will further the cause.
This is the message that we must pursue for us to have the right of freedom from religion and to buttress the legitimacy of our cause. We don't have to deliver the message with a sledgehammer, but with civil clarity, insistence, persistence, and rationality.