Let us forget any & every religion - the World needs HUMANITY as the only religion in its present day context - conversion / intolerance etc. are differences which one needs to rise above & look at the macro picture & not the micro picture.

haha that's ok, i had an interesting read of your comments nonetheless :)

so we need 2 rely on humanity... humanity, humanity. the thing about people is that we're not perfect. we rape, and steal, and hate and murder and do all these things our gods or non-gods tell us not to.

in embracing humanity do we also embrance the frailty of humanity? do we say "well, its part of the human experience" and so does it then become ok? do our morals become relative because we become our own gods and thus choose what we want right and wrong to be?

i'm not saying religion in the religious sense is perfect. but neither is making humans the source of our religion. ur just replacing one thing with another. and i think from the tone of your voice it seems ur quite dogmatic about this "we need 2 replace religion with HUMANITY". like i said, ur basically replacing one religion with another, and it turns out that YOU are the dogmatic, intolerant one.

until someone can disPROVE there is no God, i say let people legally try and convert each other as much as they want. its not ur place to tell them they can't. THAT is the height of intolerance.

(p.s. apologies for the atrocious way i have abused the english language in this post. too much on my mind with uni exams in a couple of weeks).

Thanks to Avinash Dutt for providing some erudite and informed comment about the realities of Indian law and politics as they relate to religion. I’m only an occasional visitor to that country, but my overwhelming impression is that religion there is not so much simply a set of personally held philosophical or metaphysical ideas as in the West – it has much more to do with the fundamental social identity of the believer. I found that to tell an average Indian that I was an atheist was understood to mean that in some sense I felt myself a non-person. I found I had to describe myself as a “secular humanist, you know, like what Gandhi taught” so as not to evoke a shocked sympathy from many of my Indian friends. While evangelical Christians might feel they’re well meaning in their conversion work, for many Indians (as far as I can tell) this feels like an aggressive and arrogant colonization from the West.

The basic premise of the Indian state (and one of the reasons for its survival as the world’s largest democracy) is its intense and radical commitment to secularism. The rise of pockets of Hindu nationalism and Hindu chauvinism are an anomaly and anathema to most Hindus I know: as with Islamist extremism they are the dressing up of political agendas in pseudo religious language.

There is no doubt that the continued existence of a large, underprivileged Dalit underclass in India remains a huge challenge for the country and for Hinduism itself. But self righteous “rice-christians”, many of whom see poverty as an opportunity to score “soul-points”, can often find themselves undermining the hard work of the local people in fighting the real causes of poverty.

I don’t claim to understand the complexities of Indian society. I’d certainly be very, very, cautious and respectful about going in and claiming I had the answers to its problems (or that I understood its strengths).

What's new? Where isn't it an offence, in some manner, to be a Christian these days?

In middle-eastern countries, they are treated like dirt. Not just by the people, by the government. There are laws favoring harsh treatment of non-Muslims, and in some places it's actually illegal to even be one.

In Qatar and Saudi Arabia, there are no churches, but I'm sure this is the case in many others.

Yet Saudi Arabia was allowed to participate in the world cup, what a joke. Why were the South Africans banned again? Apartheid? So, only racial apartheid is bad, not religious or gender.

Oh, that's fine, glad that's cleared up then.

Christians, instead of following Jesus, should stop turning the other cheek and fight back.

Not enough is said in the media about how non-Muslims are treated in these nations, and in India.

That makes perfect sense, they have a caste system for crying out loud.

Here Muslims harp on about the way Palestinians are treated, yet all of the mid-east used to be Christian, and they have all been run out. Nations like Lebanon and Syria used to be 100% Christian, but are now much smaller.

As for Palestinians, they don't care anyway. How many people know that they are kept in detention centres that they haven't been allowed to leave for over 50 yrs? Children are born in them, in nations like Lebanon, Jordan, and have never left.

They aren't allowed out to work, buy land, in other words, they aren't accepted as we accept refugees, free to live in the community as equals.

More needs to be said on this topic, much more.

Benjamin, are you a Christian? If so, did you really mean "Christians, instead of following Jesus, should stop turning the other cheek and fight back"? I think perhaps you could reword that, I don't like the idea of being enjoyed to NOT follow Jesus.
Persecution has accompanied Christianity since its early inception. The Bible tells us to rejoice in it. We should support one another as we undergo various forms of suffering.
I don't think that means that it is RIGHT to be persecuted. And in fact, the Bible also says to love justice and to seek mercy, so of course we should be advocating to end all this persecution. However, everybody should share this responsibility, Christian or not, to support people who are persecuted for the sake of their religious beliefs.

Sorry I meant to say "enjoined"... sigh, there go my 2 comments.