On Dec 5, 2007, at 5:39 AM, William T Goodall wrote: > > On 5 Dec 2007, at 00:55, Warren Ockrassa wrote: > >> On Dec 4, 2007, at 10:56 AM, William T Goodall wrote: >>> >>> >>> And people who think like that are dangerous to themselves and >>> others. >>> Hence religion is evil. >> >> No more nor less so than any other institution. > > Other institutions don't necessarily require people to believe untrue > things.
Some religions require that, yes. That does not justify tarring the entire field with the same brush. The UU church, for instance, doesn't particularly have any articles of faith (which could be one reason membership* numbers seem so low) and doesn't particularly care if you ascribe to any given belief system. Furthermore there are ample cases of individuals being motivated to perform good deeds as a direct result of religious teachings, which is pretty much inarguable proof that the statement "religion is evil" is simply not correct. It *can* be evil, there are myriad times when it *is* evil, but your statement that religion *is* evil is functionally equivalent to saying that, since some people are anaphylactically allergic to shellfish, all shellfish are lethal poisons to all individuals. It's just not true. == * I originally mistyped that as "memebership". Rather Freudian- slippish of me. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
