Dear Peter,

Thank you for clarifying:

<<I am saying that for most of us, any act of attaching ourselves to religious belief is increasingly impossible.>>

Well, "impossible" is an exaggeration, but I can agree with "difficult" - and that is why I appreciate the work of people like yourself in repudiating religious literalism that mixes up religion with science thus unnecessarily brings them to clash.

Science is for answering material questions for those with material goals, while religion answers spiritual questions for those with spiritual goals. Science for example asks "what exists?" where religion would ask "what is good?", thus there is no need for a clash between them and for the difficulties that arise from it. Once understanding this difference, one need not become "post-religious" only because they happened to be exposed to science.

<<Christianity itself is a polemic against "religion".>>

Now you confuse me: you are a Christian deacon whose calling is to help bringing your flock closer to God, which is what religion is all about, yet you claim to oppose religion?

<<it is the religious people who demand Christ be crucified.>>

But what makes you "buy" their false claims to being religious? Is it perchance their long beards? Those priests and Rabbis who murdered Christ were anything but religious - they were corrupt hypocrites, seeking power and money and the most likely reason they killed Jesus was his overturning the tables of the money-changers in the temple, making them lose their commission.

<<Religion, that which binds is displaced by faith that lives by grace.>>

Religion is there to bind us to God, so such practices which fail to do so, are merely pretence and do not belong in religion. Such practices perhaps bind people to other things, such as their nation, their king or their priesthood, but that never had anything to do with religion in the first place.

Both ritual and faith have their respected place as religious practices. Obviously different religious practices are more suitable to prescribe for different people of different temperament and in different stages of their spiritual journey.

Dear Peter,

I do not accept any religion or philosophy that depends on faith. That requires that you agree to something because other people believe in it. I cannot be sure that I am right in what I think, but I will do the best I can. If my opinion can be shown to be wrong I will change my opinion.

If your faith promotes or is associated with atrocity it requires additional faith to attribute the atrocity to evil men. It is not reasonable to think that one who points the atrocities is a rabid hater. Please examine yourself.

Ah, David you are a true son of the Enlightenment. That may not be a bad thing. However it does tend to blind you to certain things that defy rationality. That does not necessarily mean that they are irrational but that they appeal to something els.