Can I mention Rel*gi*n in this rational gathering?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/if-youre-a-christian-mu_b_9349.html

This is so right. Show me someone who'll state this common sense aloud and I'll vote them right into No.10.

I can not think of many wars that have been fought purely about the nature of god or even the smaller details of religious practice. Most have their origins in the pursuit of political and economic interest. When one group of people sets down to killing another part of humanity it is usually because they want to steal their land, their resources or their trade markets not because they want to convert them to a particular faith. Religion just happens to be a useful and powerful tool for those in power to incite hatred among ordinary people against a supposed enemy. However, it is not an essential ingredient for mass slaughter. In the First World War nationalism was quite sufficient to get Europeans to butcher each other in their millions. Indeed, I am inclined to agree with Dean Swift who suggested in Gulliver's Travels that people could be persuaded to fight wars over whether it was right to open a boiled egg at the big end or the little end.

Most politicians say very little about religion, and don't use it as a justification for policies. Blair's fixation with faith schools is worrying, however, and he ought to be stopped from creating more (and I'd like to see the existing ones phased out). I'd also like to have the Church of England disestablished (they can keep the Queen as head, if they want - just as she is Queen of Canada as well as the UK, although the countries are entirely independent; but bishops should lose their Lords' seats, and the government shouldn't appoint bishops).

At least Blair occasionally nods in the direction of atheism - he did say something about "people of all faiths, and of none, must work together". I think quite a few senior politicians are agnostic or atheist - there were many who affirmed rather than swore allegiance when starting Parliament.

(9-15 to be exact)

"Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,552388,00.html

I agree with muriel's suggested reforms and concern over faith schools (especially after having attended them myself). I'd also scrap daily prayers from the Commons & Lords.

I still have the clipping.

From the article

Did I mention Judaism? The chosen people? Come on, get off it. People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses. I'm tired of all the deaths because we did not want to give offense. Orthodox Jews are wrong and ridiculous.

This article could have come straight out of Nazi Germany. This article owes nothing whatsover to rational thinking and everything to hatred and bigotry.

I don't detect "hatred and bigotry" there, just a plea that we stop treating people who "believe" in the most ridiculour nonsense as somehow being worthy of respect and special consideration because they have "faith". Big deal. People are free to believe in anything they want (or should be) but why should the rest of us be expected to give credence to their delusions? I think that Cruise, Travolta and the Scientologist idiots are no more deluded than Christians, Jews or Muslims (for example).

Witness the past "I don't think you should be allowed to mock my faith because it's offensive" threads on DU. This is the same as saying "We can talk about things so long as I'm allowed to retreat behind my fantasy barrier - then you have to shut up, because I BELIEVE in it."

No, I don't think it's 'hatred and bigotry' - I think it would still be allowed under the forthcoming religious hatred laws (if it wouldn't, then we really are heading into a totalitarian state).

It's insulting to the religions mentioned, certainly. But there's plenty of rational thinking in it, as well as "I'm fed up to the back teeth with supernatural claims being taken seriously". It's anti-religion, not anti-semitic, and Nazis have nothing to do with it. They were just as starry-eyed about 'destiny' and mystical as the religions mentioned.

This article is extreme flamebait towards religion. The context to which it is being discussed is inappropriate.