Hi TR... thanx for the interaction old son.. but now young Jedi :) I must train you...... hehe..

Ok.. you said that Atheists had a vested interest in society 'succeeding'... but your philosophical problem with that statement is the definition of success.

Machiavelle would define it differently from you I'm sure. This has been history's problem.

Religious zealots who have in their faith a direct connection between 'The fundamentals' and 'Government/State' results in all manner of horrific ill treatment of the 'not' our flavor religionists.
This can apply to historic movements such as the Anglican, the RC, or the Hindu or Islamic. In the end, it matters little whether they can or cannot justify the State in terms of their religion, because if their drive is strong enough, they will simply invent reasons (3rd Reich).

Atheistic Zealots, such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, well.. they simply substitute the 'religious' reasons for massive ill treatment with 'non faith' related ones.

So, 'success' for one is a purified, disciplined, ordered Church run society, and for the other it is a politically purified, disciplined, ordered materialistic society.

What determines if a man becomes an Osama Bin Ladin, Oliver Cromwell, a Pol Pot, or an Ian Paisly or a Gerry Adams? I suppose it gets back to what is in the heart of the individual.

But I doubt we can say one system or the other is going to produce little philosophical clones for the next generation.

Such is the dilemna of human society. "The Kingdom of Man"

I was reading that link you gave to Muslim village. That bloke 'freeman' needs to be reported to the AFP for sure. He is advocating killing of people who elect to leave Islam.

The Kingdom of God, is not a State, but a "state of being". "If any man will follow me, let him deny himself" said Jesus... deny what ?
well.. I suggest "All of the above" (in this response)-deny our natural human inclinations to megalomania. "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" is deeper than most of us realize.

Surely we can develop enough maturity and intellect to move beyond simplistic concepts of a godly father figure.Is god so insecure that he/she needs a kingdom?Why does this god bother with pathic suckups like humans that that wax and wane in allegiance according to their emotional states?

Many from other belief systems are coming to the defence of Islam,since they know that if the vile teachings of the Koran come to fruition and it really gets on the nose,this could be the demise of the other religions.It is all about power and people will twist all manner of realities to achieve it,since power means security both economically and socially.

If you have to kill your backsliders or apostates to preserve your faith then the faith can’t have much to offer.

Religion can be, should be a comfort, a safety, a place where you can thank God[whatever you call him] for the blessings you have. But when religion is a book of rigid laws based on what old men said a thousand years or more ago, you have a book that stifles and retards human advancement.Because it stunts the mental creativity that drives life forward.
Our Earth moves forward, we must move with it or be left in the stagnant ,rotting decay of all the yesterdays.

The underlying reason that we have friction between religious zealots is typified by this remark from Boaz.

>>I feel this kind of analysis can help all of us untangle the mess which is 'mainstream' Islam today<<

What business is it of yours, Boaz, a self-confessed Christian evangelist, to propose how a different religion "untangle [its] mess"?

To a non-religionist - and, I suspect, non-zealots of any religious persuasion - this attitude can only be offensive.

To an atheist, it is simply background noise. You must know the story of the blind men and the elephant? Here are two versions:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/stories/stories.cfm?psid=110
http://discordia.loveshade.org/apocrypha/elephant.html

People who are convinced that their interpretation of ancient scripts is, like Channel Nine, "Still The One", will never agree that any other interpretation is acceptable. To an atheist - or indeed anyone who thinks for themselves rather than following someone else's dogma - the squabbles are trivial, meaningless, angels-dancing-on-a-pin exchanges, with no connection with real life.

Except.

Except where the two teams of fanatics goad each other to the point where violence is the only answer. That is when it becomes dangerous to mankind, and that is why patronizing offers to "untangle the mess which is 'mainstream' Islam today" are as pointless as they are inflammatory.

Please try to accept that normal people are not corrupted by exposure to religion - any religion - and that it is only criminals who kill. But it is possible to turn otherwise peaceable folk into criminals by constantly telling them that their beliefs are wrong.

Beliefs are emotional, not rational. And when you attack a belief system, you cause an emotional, not a rational response.

We clearly haven't learned the lessons of the Crusades, where entire armies were put together on the premise that one religion was "better" than another.

Boaz, the Christians have their ‘Talibans’ in the Christian Zionist movement who seek to establish the ‘Kingdom of God’ with Jerusalem as the capital of the world. Religion and politics is a potent mix, whatever the religion may be. http://www.christianzionism.org/

The great revolutionary Mao Zedong did a great thing for China. He launched the Cultural Revolution which focused on the abolishment of the Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. The result was that China’s education system focused on science and technology, introduced rational thought and did away with long established tradition of superstitious beliefs. Within a generation after the death of Deng Xiaoping, China is developing to be one of the biggest economy in the world.

The Cultural Revolution almost wiped out religion in China. Surprisingly, the number of Christians in China grew from 700,000 to approximately 70,000,000 in 2000, http://www.chinasoul.org/e/cross-news.htm, virtually without outside influence.

Compare China’s secular cultural revolution with that of the 1979 Islamic Cultural Revolution in Iran where Iran was purged of Western and non-Islamic influences to bring it in line with Islam. Hundreds of professors were sacked from Iran’s academia and thousands of Muslims clerics put in position of power.

Iran, together with some Muslim countries, are now exporters of Islamic terrorism, preaching violence against non-Muslims and trying to fulfill the injunction of Muhammed to establish a world-wide Islamic Caliphate. http://www.exorthodoxforchrist.com/global_islamic_caliphate.htm
Consider what their god has done for them; many are poor, corruption is rife, their countries can’t even produce enough to feed their faithful and they have to emigrate to non-Muslims countries to survive.