Problems with Analogies

Whenever I get into a discussion or argument about the existence of god, I don't usually like to bother with a whole lot of analogies. I think, more than anything else, it misses the big picture about what religion means to people.

One of the main problems theists have with atheists is that many theists believe that they have a personal relationship with their god, and use their holy texts to fulfill a philosophical and spiritual meaning in their lives. It takes a lot to help someone realize that there is another way we can assign meaning in our lives, and one thing that doesn't help is to make religious beliefs sound personally cheap.

For example, Richard Dawkins, whom I generally like, likes to make the analogy that belief in a god is fundamentally no different than believing in unicorns or fairies, as we have equal evidence for all of these things (which is to say no evidence at all). While Professor Dawkins' argument is fairly sound, what does this argument to someone who filters the meaning in their lives through their religion? Well, it pisses them off, that's what! A good analogy doesn't necessarily have to be effective in order to be true, but it does have to be true to be effective. At least Richard got half of it right. Atheists are not the only ones who use analogies to try and stump the competition and ridicule the opposition, but the ones I respect tend to at least be careful about the logic.

The thing I don't like about these analogies is not that they serve to ridicule the opposition, as I think ridicule is an effective weapon against ridiculous beliefs. No, the thing I don't like about them is that it places the believer in a position of ridicule next to the atheist position, which is placed in a position of sensibility. It's a "Ha ha I'm better than you" argument, which never works.

 I don't think ridicule works in analogy. It can certainly work as a direct approach: Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...(taken from reddit as the first google response to the search term "zombie jew") 

Humour and ridicule can sometimes address legitimate criticisms of a belief without having to compare it to what's being argued against. I know that when I came to the realization that I was an atheist, I had to convince myself more than anyone had to convince me. I think it takes a certain type of person to be able to respond positively to an analogy that ridicules them, a certain kind of open-mindedness. Being that many believers that will have the conversation are indeed closed minded, it may be better to approach that situation from a different angle.