Couldn’t agree more.

[quote]When the US was founded, there was a reason that the framers of the Constitution declared that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. They were not talking about faith–they had, however, seen what religious wars did to Europe, and they also knew that they themselves held a variety of faiths.To wed the government to a particular religion was, I suspect, simply too dangerous and unwise given the passion of faith and the power of churches[/quote]

A good lesson for all kids to learn about US history. I do like Huffington’s distinction between faith(individual) and religion(collective).

They’d be so docile we could take them out with a butter knife or even a pair of nail clippers.

But would we even need to worry about Skinny-Cat-ism, or can we coexist with them?

I say we let them convert and reconvert the masses all they want to… maybe they’ll become useless like a tape that’s been recorded over too many times and is just a blue screen and a loud beep.

Blue, beeping Judeo-Christ-Muslim-ists.

Anyway, peace is cool. Good message, hard to get past the $$$ war machine.

Those “in the faith” aren’t able to distinguish between their faith and their religion. To them their religion is the natural outgrowth of their faith; their faith is pure ergo their religion is pure, all instances of their religion engaging in inhumane acts notwithstanding. It’s classic cognitive dissonance — you deal with it by making believe the bad part isn’t true.

Atheists have the advantage in this sense. Lacking faith in the religious sense we are able to see the distinction between personal faith and religious affiliation, and therefore are quite justified in saying “I can’t respect your faith because I can’t know what it is, and I can’t respect your religion because I DO know what it is: it’s a money-grubbing scam.

We atheists can, however, respect their right to believe such nonsense, but even theists don’t respect others when they act out nonsense as defined by the theists themselves. And that’s all we atheists are saying: believe in any old nonsense you want, but you want me to “respect” you when you behave nonsensically? I don’t think so.

Since no one is responding here…

I’m sure this won’t make the headlines…

“Personally, I’m skeptical that this is the tomb of Jesus and I made this point very clear to the filmmakers,” Gibson is quoted as saying.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152766396&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Hey did you guys know Kurt Vonnigut died? damn it, one less bright light of free thinkking in the world…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070412/ap_on_re_us/obit_vonnegut

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view. He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. In “Slaughterhouse-Five,” he drew a headstone with the epitaph: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

coercive “faith” or greedy “religion”

It’s difficult at times to separate these two concepts. I like the way that the author managed to do so so explicitly.