TBC,

I don't think they are spineless idiots, just "special" and deserving of our pity.

beware the greenies and feminists!

The greatest zealots, the true believers today are not 'christian', but from new pseudo religions, the greenies, the feminists, the lefties, the human-rights mob...

These are the people who blindly follow the offical line, the doctrine, of their belief system. The people with the power and organisation and funding...

My beliefs have not changed since my teens, but the degree of aggression with which I advance them has diminished greatly. I am happy to declare myself an atheist when I am confident that this will not cause offence. I greatly admire Richard Dawkins, but would not have chosen "The God Delusion" as a book title.
These days, I am not out to convert believers, but prefer to concentrate my energies on preventing them from influencing immature minds. In particular, I try to prevent the resources of the state from being misapplied in that way.

TBC
My point being that, when it comes to one group using coercion to force others to obey their arbitrary opinions, the beliefs of the statists are in no better position than those of the theists. For example, tithing used to be compulsory, and it was used to fund a particular religion favoured by the state whether the particular subject wanted to or not. This is ethically and intellectually no better than using taxation to fund the propagation of state-worshipping institutions, including the ABC, and compulsory indoctrination of children in state schools. If we believe in religious toleration, how about political toleration - why should some people be forced to pay for the arbitrary, and irrational, political opinions of others. Or should we all bow to that wisdom?

>Or that everything is bollocks no matter what?
Humans display a great ability to hold belief systems that a minute's reflection would show are probably bollocks, of which religions are IMO a good example. However such credulity is part of the rich tapestry of life and people should be free to believe something or not, if they want. But they should *not* be free to force other people to fund or to comply with their bollocking beliefs; and the most prevalent modern superstition is the widespread belief - that just happens to be inculcated under compulsion at public expense for 10 years - in the presumptive goodness and expedience of the State to acheive virtually anything you could care to mention, from managing the economy, to regulating wages, to educating children, to regulating light-bulbs (to save the planet), to regulating baby-sitting, to regulating lamingtons, to fine-tuning the temperature of the planet, to .... is there anything that people today think the state *cannot* do?

Atheism, global warming and political correctness have more zealots and preachers than organised religion these days. They are the new secular religions.

Unfortunately, their proponents cannot see they are simply advocates of new religious belief systems which are often more feeble than the ones they seek to criticise.

Its easy to believe you are superior because of your belief systems but it is just not true. How about we allow each person to have their own beliefs without trying to convert them? That goes for Atheists as well as religious people.

Like many of us, the author learned that lesson the hard way.

The most self-righteous are those who believe their chosen path is suitable for everyone else, that others should conform to their worldview and/or be provided with, at the cost of the State, special privileges over others purely by virtue of their belief.

It is rational to accept the 'irrational' (in terms of belief without evidence) as part of the human psyche. The evidence is everywhere and not just in relation to religious belief.

The human psyche has many facets and irrationality is not confined to one group.

The task, and it is not an easy one, is to eradicate the sick-souled religious zealot. This would in all likelihood, have a twofold effect, in eradicating the atheist zealot who might also insist their worldview is for all.

Zealotry nearly always begets knee-jerk zealotry of the opposite.

Something to do with equal and opposite forces.