I do think that is enough for now. I have to close the front door; the blood is seeping in. True believers are out there killling the planet because the Bible tells them so.

Goddess (a kindlier, gentler imaginary Being) gave us Jesus and Mo to help keep our heads on straight.

anyway, I think this quote works well:

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg Quote

so, the bad people will do the greed thing, but the good people would not have a divine warrant to hang gays. Everyone wins.

You’re being somewhat selective in what you choose to “understand” in what you wrote. I see something totally different and I’m looking at the same passage with the same logical, non-religious eyes as you.

Religion does not poison everything. A closed mind does. If religion was as evil as everyone thinks we would all be wading around waste deep in blood. Those of us lucky enough to be still standing anyway. If religion was as evil as everyone thinks we’d probably already be living through the nuclear winter. Call it what it is; fucking headcases who, if they didn’t have religion would use race. If they didn’t have race they’d use power…or greed….or boredom…or meanness….or just ‘coz.

McGronk,

Then it would just be a sword and no good would ever come of it. Since we know that not to be true (see “waste deep in blood” point above) we have to assume that it’s a ploughshare that’s shaped as a ploughshare that was originally intended to be used as a ploughshare and the fault still, and always will, lay in the user.

some pearls of wisdom in the coran.
2:216 Fighting is enjoined on you, and is an object of dislike to you; and it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you love a thing while it is evil for you, and Allah knows, while you do not know.
3:118 O you who believe! do not take for intimate friends from among others than your own people; they do not fall short of inflicting loss upon you; they love what distresses you; vehement hatred has already appeared from out of their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater still; indeed, We have made the communications clear to you, if you will understand.
2:191 And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
4:101 And when you journey in the earth, there is no blame on you if you shorten the prayer, if you fear that those who disbelieve will cause you distress, surely the unbelievers are your open enemy.

A set of ideas (religion) that tells you to not make friends and despise someone who doesn’t believe the same unprovable ideas that you have, and then gives a name those that differ from you calling them unbelievers, then tells you that those unbelievers are the worst creatures on earth, and to fight them even if you don’t feel like it because god knows better, and to kill unbelievers… seriously, some ideas are just evil. And denying it is just nonsense.

what kind of person will spend his youth learning this book by heart and come out as an understanding and capable of fact based logic and rationality human being?

religion poisons everything

The only way that religion forms a benign and useful “tool”, IMHO, is as an anaesthetic for the fear of death (death’s a scary thing, so I don’t blame anybody for trying to wish it away).
But to take your tool analogy further, what use is a ploughshare likely to be put to if it’s shaped more like a sword? Religion may be morally inert, as you say, but its nasty aspects are inevitably attractive to nasty minds, far more than its benign elements appeal to the good in people.

/apologies for the gravity; cartoon is the funniest one yet

We don’t blame Islam, or the Qur’an, the Bible or whatever other religion.
We blame the people that follow those stupid ideas.
The idea is just that, an idea. It may be true or it might be false (i have my little idea on the matter but that’s not relevant), but an idea can’t be good or evil in by itself.

I died lol’ing.

Edmund Fitzgerald while catching salmon in the Straits.

Dear Poor Richard,

I believe Gordon Lightfoot is Canadian by birth, and not interested on

being placed on a falling in value U.S. Coin.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

At last it’s in the open….

Now we know where the “Mo” in MoTown came from.

Iraq, South of 8 Mile, is called Irok.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

Yes, to Aretha Franklin. Somebody, stone me. Please.

Science works to find the single best explanation. Religion constantly generates differences, each claiming that all the others are wrong in some way.

Interesting to think that for any given set of beliefs and interpretations put forth by one denomination, all of the remaining 99.9…% agree that there is at least one aspect in which they are wrong. They just won’t be able to agree on which particular nuance is the error.

Author, you are getting better and better. Thanks.