You are right, Pelican, "There is joy and beauty all around us - in nature, in people and in doing good". My name for that joy and beauty is God, and as a free thinking adult I choose to nurture my relationship with my God through the practice of my Christian faith.

Your statement that religion does more to divide than to include ignores the fact that religion in and of itself doesn't divide, rather some people choose to use their religion to justify their self-importance. Human beings will always find avenues to do that - it's sometimes called tribalism, other times nationalism. The greatest evil perpetrated against me was work related (in a prior profession). It had nothing to do with religion.

Spiritually I'm a Catholic and professionally I'm a social worker. My life and my work are improved through my faith practice. I don't shy away from the fact that many have done evil things in the name of my Church. But there has also been much more good done. It is unfortunate that many choose to be blind to that good and prefer to focus on the evil. But, that is a human response.

For me, the Catholic Church has no purpose or identity in and of itself. It exists to facilitate the relationship between my God and me, and all others who use it as their vehicle to be in relationship with God. In that context, I can call myself Catholic but at the same time question, doubt and often disagree with the dogma of the Church. This enables me to respect, and celebrate the fact that others maintain their relationship with God through different vehicles (One River, Many Wells by Matthew Fox is a terrific read).

Religion gets into trouble when people apply the tribal attitudes of football or the Holden/Ford dispute to their faith lives. If mankind can ever overcome its tendency to be tribal it will be of much greater benefit than moving beyond religion.

Rather Christianity a bit childish possibly re Sermon on the Mount than similar to the ultra right US Evangelicals.

On Compass only last night, in a portrayal of the ultra Believers the look in the eyes of the more youthful was certainly far from softening, but more like portrayals of the Hitler Youth Movement.

Even the so-called prayer sessions sounded very martial, a session with President Bush completing the picture, the type of adoration, from my philosophical point of view, really completing the imagery.

Certainly much rather be known as a Looney Leftie.

The quote by Dawkins shows that at the heart of it, religion is childish - the worship, the blood sacrifice, the metaphysics. All rather ridiculous presumptions that would not stand up to the slightest scrutiny in any other field of discourse.

The author seems to concede this and tries to argue that the bedrocks of modern society were laid by the Judeo-Christian ideology.

While he's right to a certain degree, this doesn't refute the argument made my Dawkins and it doesn't provide any reasoning as to why religion is still relevant.

The secular humanist hate being labeled but love to give out labels. A couple of words in Scripture sums up the secularist. It reads 'a fool says in his heart that there is no god'. Thousands of books by god deniers and god haters have not changed the truth of that simple proverb. If they had any proof they would not need to continue to come up with the sort of rehashed crap that Dawkins spews out.

A man is appointed to die once and then comes judgement. No amount of religous secular thesis will change that. You can comfort yourself with lies or you can face the truth and turn to the only ONe who can save you from eternal torment. That is reality!

"Only a fool says in his heart there is no god"

Ah, argument over folks. Runner found a quote in this scrappy, old book he had lying around.

If this works, we should cut out fragments of Dawkins books, mix them with some fragments from Hitchens and Harris, glue it all together and bury it in a Middle Easter desert.

In two thousand years noone will be able to argue with us!

O Lord, I beseech thee, save Sells from his antithetical syllogisms, and Runner from his eternal torments.
Please do it while I am out communing with the beauty that resides within the realities of the real world; before I return to the recycle bin of nature's composting system.