You are preaching to the converted (pardon the reference)

but blaming the basic idea of religion for those crimes is like blaming murder on the idea of guns. It's not the tool, it's what you do with it.

Nothing makes me more sick than any atrocity being done in the name of religion. Not to mention the absolute stupidity perpetrated by it (IE, logical, simple solutions to modern problems being labeled as sinful)

But it is a basic human right to believe what you wanyt to believe. Unfortunately, many of the people believe what they want and would deny others their right to their own belief. Dont get me started on the catholic church... i have very little nice to say about it as an establishment, and even less good things to say about the clergy, including the pope.

Read this:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_k...r/index_1.html

it's about Father James Porter, a man possibly more evil than Hitler.
If you read it, I'm afraid it will do nothing to help improve the opinions of people who hate the catholic church, but it is frightening.

i think we all are well aware of the hypocracies running rampant in any organized belief system.

The origional statement still holds true .. one of the fundamentals of any religion is to lay down a blueprint for life. Most of it is healthy and righteous and for many people - neccessary.

Unfortunately human nature is the problem .. not so much the doctrines (althought there are pointedly some unfortunate and outdated messages in there too)
Much of it is interpreted freely and bent to suit certain religious leaders personal beliefs.

It is the people involved that corrupt what was once an important guide for living withing a society.

Its the same with government, education, police, anything.
People are the problem - not the religion.

There are some undeniably outdated messages re gays, women, etc in most beliefs ... that were bred from the ignorance of the past.

but the bottom line is - that there are still generally positive messages in what the churches push despite the news making crimes that have occured.


Personally i dont need any of it ...

Same here. All along, it has been used by immoral people to keep others in the dark, making the easier to control. Power is a hard thing to give up, and if the Church let their people be more "in the know", they would be giving up a lot of power. plus, they would have to admit to being wrong, which is hard for anyone.

That being said, sadly, they do actually believe they are right with a lot of what they say.

Oh yeah, and the #1 fault with most religions is the #1 fault with communism and a whole lot of other "isms", it fails to take into account that people are people, and people are greedy, self indulgent and ignorant as a whole.

Of course there are bad things in everything.
But few groups, institutions or whatever can base their bullshit on the Word of God and defend there prejudice with a book so popular and widespread as The Bible or the humongous rightiousness of The Church itself.
The Nazis would have loved to have the kind of support mechanism in place for propping up their views that The Church and religion gives.

I have no argument against that, and absolutely no inclination to do so.

Religion just needs to break itself down to prehistoric traditions...
If you worship one god you go here, someone else you live in the next town.

Religion shouldn't be that big of a deal, because it's such a private matter.

Of course, and the late Bill Hicks would agree, it is sorta funny to make fun of...even if it's your own cosmology.

well, unfortunately it'll never be a private deal because people who 'have the answer' feel they want us to share in their joy.

and i finally figured out why they want to recruit...

cause the fun dirty girls are on the other side.

There just arent enough party girls in heaven, and the music sucks.

its like one big bad party.

in our town we are made up of nothing but churches
for instance these people wanted to open a massage
parlor, it was open maybe a week, then the churches
closed it down. baptist churches rule this town, there at leat 8
of thier churches here. the younger kids have to go out of town
just 2 have fun.:rolleyes:

lol That's probably why he hates satan so much, good party envy.