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Ahem:
At Ricky & tompe:
Find it deliciously ironic that you engage in this debate over elephants and turtles in a thread that has taken on religious tones.
The ultimate point is that both are false, have been proven false, and are equally ridiculous. Kinda like say, any organised spiritual system of worship/metaphysical belief.
At Gideon-
You seem on the verge of reductionism just as much as Dawkins. What many take away from the book, and something I saw him doing in a Booknotes bit on C-Span, is the sense that there is hope beyond the cult. I dare say that carrying his latest book around in a religious community is akin to sporting a pink triangle on one's clothes or a rainbow sticker on a person's car. There are appendices that provide footnotes and contact/support information for recovering believers.
As for moderate believers being enjoined for the common good with non-believers--
There seem to be few western religions that do not exhort minions to create more. There is the spiritual slavery of a religious upbringing for children, then there is the proselytizing, which in years past has been violent (and sadly in some cases, still is quite violent).
I think that people are a whole are vapid, violent, and repugnant, but a person on their own can be a wondrous engine for ingenuity and good.
Truly wish that charlatans and petty-minded control freaks had one fewer bastion with which to deceive others. See, to my mind, if there were no religion, all the folks in the US asking for money would be forced to admit that they are greedy, lying opportunists, people on the eastern Mediterranean would have to come clean about being pig-headed bullies who cannot let anything lie in the past, and the kids one block over from them would need reveal that they are repressed, dysfunctional idiots who cannot take a joke.
Take away religion, and all you have done is taken away an excuse.
At least that is a start.
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