Thanks for sharing

1) About the placement of religion:
Belief can just be where there is no evidence so far. Most religions try to give explanations beyond the human understanding. In the time the bible was written, there was no kowledge about the Big Bang. If there had been, the Genesis books would never have become very popular. While science improves, it takes some space from religion by making things reasonably explainable. The stronger your binding to your religion is, the harder it is for you to accept that. The fact that there are strong human feelings involved, when their opinion of the highest truth is at dispute has led to much anger and violence before and it still does today.
That is, in my humble opinion, not a mistake done by religion, but a mistake done by those who underestimate the human life. After all, eyery religion explains the human being as a servant for a higher purpose. This goal is only achievable by humanity, not anything else is adressed by the rules of any religion.

2) About the funcion of religion:
Many humans try to understand their existence and seek for a high purpose. Many of those try to find it in religion. They experience orientation and a system of values, which supports them to understand why others have to be treated well. There are some who don’t need this help and can treat others like everyone wants to be treated without getting further reason to do so.

3) About the administration of religion:
Any system, any club, any society will elect persons to lead them and to fulfil certain tasks which are necessary to keep it (club, company etc.) capable of acting. The ones who are elected should normally be those who represent the values and ideas the best. I would guess that those leaders are the ones who believe the strongest in the values of their company/club/religion. Even If I were convinced that some of their dogmata are false/allegoric/exaggerated, they weren’t allowed to admit that in public. Their job is to represent what their religion stands for. Of course, some dynamic is necessary, even if you want to provide orientation.

4) About condemnation in general:
Don’t mix the meanings of the words religion/church/fundamentalists/ideology. This leads to mistakes in the reasonable path to truth.

Check this video out for some interesting history that Christians either don’t know about or refuse to accept. It’s terribly interesting:

If you haven’t done so, watch all the videos by Evid3nc3, the dude puts together an epic story: http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3

Note your comment about e-mail subscribe……IT question for you……do the orange RSS feed subscribe buttons on the RH side of my blog seem to work? Not a computer expert….if there is a problem I will get the IT guy my business uses to sort!!

I keep going on about the Bible in particular for two reasons:
1) “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. — Isaac Asimov”
2) Without the Bible there is no Christianity.

I have never been shown a single spontaneous occurrence of Christianity or any kind of Yahweh-ism at all outside the Middle East. And you’d think the almighty creator of the universe would actually want to save people instead of burning the poor bastards for eternity. You’d think he might inspire some people outside the desert to maximise the saving. Apparently we think wrong.

Remove the Bible and the arguments become untenably thin – so thin in fact that the retreat is inevitably to ‘a feeling’. And the bottom line is, I have a feeling I’m going to the win the lottery every weekend. That hasn’t exactly worked out well for me.

I’ve heard of The Good Book but haven’t gotten around to reading it either. I might do that when I’m done with Koran Curious (CJ Werleman is awesome).

I look forward to reading your post on the De Botton video! Doesn’t look like I can email subscribe to your posts so let me know when you’ve posted it.