To Antitheists: What would it take for you to accept religious expression as a healthy thing for some people.

Hmm, hard to think of something. My anti-theist philosophy is based on my view that the sort of thinking religion requires is harmful in itself. Even the compartmentalization needed to accept something supernatural without evidence would fall under this.

Then there's of course the question of what "healthy thing" means. Is it healthy if it makes you happy, for instance? But what if the thing that makes you happy also leads you to making other people miserable, or leads you to spend your time on things that to you seem good, but are ultimately counterproductive? For instance, in one of Evid3nc3's excellent videos on youtube he described having problems with one of his university classes, and resorting to prayer when he failed to get the material. This quite predictably resulted in him failing even harder, due to the time he was praying instead of studying. So is it healthy when somebody harmless (very liberal and non-conflicting with atheistic morality) tries to pray away illness or study troubles? I do not think so.

To get to the point where I'd say it's healthy you basically have to be non-religious, though you can be religiously inspired. Deciding that "I like Jesus", or "I like Buddha", and taking some inspiration from them is healthy enough, I think, so long they're not deified, their ideas aren't immune from criticism, and the irrationality is eliminated.

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I consider myself an anti-theist and I agree that religious expression can be a healthy thing for some people.

My anti-theism is specifically geared towards people enforcing their beliefs, ignoring well established facts, and treating a book that promotes atrocities as a moral guide to be respected.

The line between a secular group of friends and a religion is that to be a religion, there must be a supernatural presence. There is no justification to believe these supernatural claims and believing things for bad reasons could compel people to act in bad ways (like praying for a problem to be solved instead of doing something about it). Therefore, while some people do get comfort out of religion, the danger that they will act irrationally is inherently unhealthy. It would be better for them to draw comfort from real sources like family, friends, hobbies, or baby puppies.