Strange that Bill would quote Christianity at its strongest as a producer of a great civilization.

Has he forgotten the Inquisition burning people alive after torture because they didn't eat pork and therefore were Jewish or Musilm - hardly seems a good period.

And then the 30 years war in which I understand competing versions of Christianity wiped out a third of the population. And then of course the Crusades, burning witches and the English hang draw and quartering Catholics does not sound like a great civilisation.

And the Inquisition lasted until the 18th century in Spain and witches were burned in 17th century America.

And of course the holding back of scientific resaerch by the Church and the mass killing of cats due to religious doctrine which led to plagues of rats and of course the Black Death.

Someone in the Forum claimed that modern secularism killed more people in the 20th Century than were killed by religion in earlier centuries. Perhaps that is only because populations were far larger in the 20th century.

Hypothesis, you forget of course, that the religous have a history of persecuting those, who believe in a different version of religion!

The squabble between religions, as to who is "really" in touch with the Almighty, whose version of which holy book is "really" the correct one, will go on for eons, as it has in the past.

Ok cool, whatever gets you through the night, as I always say...

Meantime, like it or not, luckily we live in a secular world, where tolerance is becoming a keyword and religion a mere lifestyle choice, a bit like golf or tennis.

In a secular world, rational thought matters. Try going before our
courts and telling the judge that you know its true, as you heard
voices from heaven. More then likely he'll send you off for treatment as a schizophrenic :)

Meantime, the so called Almighty is free to post his rules on the
moon, for all to see, if he is around somewhere. It certainly would solve alot of squabbling going on, between the various brands of
religious nuts, that we see all around us.

So please leave us alone lol. You have your freedom of religion.
We want our freedom from religion! For if we put up the weird stuff
that you believe in a court of law, you would be laughed out of court. Meantime keep arguing amongst yourselves as to the correct version. There have been xxxx brands of religion, many holy books and no doubt all that squabbling at least keeps you occupied and
off the streets :)

Because we spend our lives continually immersed in cause and effect situations we hold fast to a belief in causalty. But when we cannot continue to seek answers, sometimes because there are none that we can prove or we want to remain ignorant, we tend to say that some effects may not have material causes, i.e. indeterminism. For this reason I go with determinism and on the balance of probabilities I’m prepared to assume that we evolved miraculously like everything else. It would be an even more extraordinary notion to the point of pure absurdity that life was somehow created separately from evolution and then allowed to evolve or even quite absurdly never evolve.

The question of questions and perhaps our centre of interest, has always been, whence did we come from, what are the limits, to what goals do we tend, and to what place do we occupy in nature with our relations to the universe of things. AND, look how easy it is for people to disregard the major issue of guardianship of the planet with pathetic little religious wars on everything. Nature is a trillion times more important and interesting than these superstitious teddies (gods) that dumbos are so attracted to. Just seems we have to manage the change over to living with the disasters of the religious past and understand that we live in an infinite material universe.

We need to come to terms with the enormous data bank our little tiny lonely planet has bequeathed us where all processes are irreversible, and all effects have an infinite number of material causes, where all decreases in order in one portion of the universe results in equivalent increases in order in another portion and that evolution is the process occurring at all times with respect to each electron, atom, cell, organ, organism, species, ecosystem, planet, and galaxy.

Your religion is not defined by what god you believe in,but how dedicated and true you are to your fellow man.By my definition those with positive,constructive attitude are the closest to any perceived creator,than the self appointed,judgemental pious power mongerers.

Let's pay homage to the "religion of disbelief" because if I were god,I'd be rewarding independance and original thinking,not some lazy sloth sucking up to me with the anticipation of reward at the ceasation of some boring religious ritual each Sunday.

Neither the raving religious freaks nor the secular hedonestic hippies have the answers.

I don't think it was intended that we should know,since we have to muster a lot of courage each morning to face the next challenge,and incrimmentally,without realising it,we do progress.

Cute quote ““despotism may be able to do without faith, but democracy cannot”.

I see nothing “democratic” in the sexist and paternalistic structure of most Christian priest-led institutions.
I believe Democracy does not rely on the efforts of the religious minded who have endeavoured to undermine democracy when it has challenged their self-righteous view of the way we should be allowed to choose for ourselves. It is the values of democracy which entitle you to blubber on with your drivel and me to counter it, it is not the way of dogmatic Christians to tolerate dissent as we see regularly when the zealots parade outside medical clinics and movie theatres.

Re “If Bone had read more widely she would realise that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, for all their faults, have in many ways been a force for good in the world.”

That might be claimed, however as many people (and possibly more) have been murdered, butchered, burnt and victimised in the name of religious zealotry as have been by the atheists Bill suggests in Stalin and Hitler etc. (although some schools of thought suggest Hitler was a devout Christian too).

Stop demonising those who hold views contrary to your own, Bill and get on with having a real life.

Arjay summarises it as well as I have ever seen it said

“Your religion is not defined by what god you believe in but how dedicated and true you are to your fellow man. By my definition those with positive, constructive attitude are the closest to any perceived creator, than the self appointed, judgemental pious power mongerers.”

In those few words he relays greater wisdom and truth than all your pseudo-ethical-religious ramblings piled up together in a heap.

Bill demonstrates eminently the situation monotheism faces and it's reactions to reality. Those who've read Pamela Bones article, may find it difficult to see where Bill gets his interpretations from.

Support for Bill shows the increasing desperation of Yahweh's followers as their judgement time approaches, and real truth is revealed to the world.

Their desperate attempts to screw truth, making it look like fiction. Creating fiction, making it look like truth, becomes more obvious with each response. It's irrelevant to them what the defined meaning of secularism is, nor the historical evidence as to its origins. What's relevant, is how they'll use blatant lies in supporting their psychopathy.

They conveniently forget the millions of indigenous peoples and cultures destroyed in the name of god, nor the direct association 99% of historical despots have with Yahweh, in their beliefs.

Bill eminently demonstrates the hate, anger and fear he feels towards people sensible enough to follow ethical progress, rather than a violent straw man god. The power of prayer is a fine example of reality, considering the amount of people and times they prey to Yahweh, (beg for mercy from his constant wrath) 99.999% are never answered.

Secularism's also a failed state, it's failed to express the truth. Still bowing down to religious pressure, in an attempt to keep the peace. So we're at a cross roads, all past ideologies have failed and they've given us war deciding whose the most despotic. Aren't we being trapped in stagnation, repeating the same arguments, with the same but even more devastating results.

Its gone beyond who's right, we should be looking at what new approach we can create for our future. Who cares whether despotic secularism is better than despotic yahwehism, if there is no future beyond war and environmental collapse.

We need ideologies that look at reality, with an ethical approach to all the living dimensions of our world. There's no place for god any more, its failed miserably, we need a future, not a continuing past.