Religion is the one area of our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the demand to give good evidence and valid arguments in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And yet these beliefs regularly determine what they live for, what they will die for and—all too often—what they will kill for. Consequently, we are living in a world in which millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales. We are living in a world in which millions of Muslims believe that there is nothing better than to be killed in defense of Islam. We are living in a world in which millions of Christians hope to soon be raptured into the stratosphere by Jesus so that they can safely enjoy a sacred genocide that will inaugurate the end of human history. In a world brimming with increasingly destructive technology, our infatuation with religious myths now poses a tremendous danger. And it is not a danger for which more religious faith is a remedy.
It really is bizarre to live in a world where scientific progress is moving at such an amazing pace, while the majority of our countrymen believe that they are being monitored by an all powerful being who is waiting to punish them for not following the rules he laid out in a book written thousands of years ago. And most of the believers do not really follow all of the rules, only the ones that their minister outlines as being important for their salvation. The main one seems to be to give this minister a bunch of your money.
I do try to understand what compels such intelligent people to accept this fable, but I just cannot. Sorry.
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i've read most of your page and wanted to at least say "yeah, me too, or me neither, or here here, or is it hear hear" it's good to hear a fellow alaskan with an opinion other than "siera club sucks" oops, you haven't said anything about your environmental stance. guess i better read on.
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