Great article and so true. All of the centuries since the Protestant Deformation ( no misspelling) have progressively brought all civilisations lots of blopodshed, secualr revolutions and culminating in the massive bloodshed and genocides of the twentieth century.

A return to daily prayer, consecrating oneself to the Immacualte Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rodary and Novena devotions, Holy Mass and sacraments regularly will help restore any nations to economic and spiritual health.
Look at thosae who have thrown away the social encylicals and the catechism as relates to social teaching. We have had extreme tarioff reductions ( Whitlam), easy no fault divorce ( Lionel Murphy), privatisations, amalgamations of businesses and of trade unions, deregualtion of currency and many other commerical arrangements, removal of legitimate consorship( from Hawke through to Howard).
These guys, especially the Labor guys rejected the DLP; as did the NSW bishops. Now we all pay the price for Iemma and Costa and now Rees with thire 'parternships with merchant banks and the selling of public assets and encouragement to toll raods instead of employing fulltime permanent workforces through the old DMR.
All these secularists have caused this social upheaval on behalf of the libertarian immoral Left and on behalf of evila nd greedy big business. The Liberal Party and the Nats have always been on the side of big business and of the bad guys out there. That is why we need a return to the DLP ( true Labor ) platform that is consistently pro worker, pro Australian, pro Christian heritage.

belief in god may not be childish, but i don't see how the article provides any support for the claim. the article seems not much more than (childish) appeal to authorities, one of whom i know has written demonstrable nonsense. and, the one authority referred to in detail is (contentiously) quoted on the judeo-christian basis of our society's ethics and morality, not the idea of god.

articles like this do nothing to dispel the notion that religion is childish nonsense. it's bait and switch. at least sellick tries an honest justification, even if i think he fails dismally.

Hilarious topic.
Einstein also said that religion is childish and primitive.

In my very humble opinion, if people feel insecure or wicked without imagining they have the support of, as CJ said, an "imaginary friend", and actually imagine that this God watches everything they do every freakin' minute of the day, and that he actually is obsessed about what they wear or eat, who they have sex with and when, then don't mind me if I point and laugh.

But I don't think that a belief in god is necessarily MORE childish or primitive than some other things that people do or believe in, like believing that treating rocks like pets brings luck, or that a fish tank in the 'wealth area' of your home will make you stinkin' rich.

I have to admit that I find it quite childish of moi to sit back with coke and popcorn to indulge in a dose of schadefreude whenever the OLO fundies manage to imagine impossible things like witchcraft, or that a fertilised ovum is a person, and claim to believe that, too.

Nothing is said of sin as the great equaliser: "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God".

Christianity turned the virtues upside down. For example, wealth was once seen as desirable, but with Jesus it became a hindrance - "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"

In its early days Christianity had a stronger polemic against elitism, oppression and empire than anything a rabid communist could come up with.

Nietzsche's 'On the Genealogy of Morality' is worth a read on these topics.

I can see that a tribal culture might consider it expedient to worship a local god. Where the childishness appears is in the steady inflation of the powers of that god as Christianity expanded. "Your god can make a volcano explode an' turn sticks into snakes? Well, my god can do EVERYFINK!! Nyahh, nyahh, top that!" Unfortunately by rewriting dogma to specify an infinite god, Christianity lay down all sorts of trouble for itself later, when enough of its constituency became educated enough to see the logical flaws inherent in this claim.

How do vocal Christians react now to the exposure of this silliness? By generating more silliness: unverifiable claims that civilisation would have been worse or not have developed without Christianity (how can anyone possibly _know_?) or that human morality depends somehow on a belief which is confined to about one-quarter of human beings. Much more mature to make the kind of polite retreat exemplified by Anglican clergy: "We know we're wrong, chaps, but it makes us feel better, so just leave us alone and we won't bother you." Stiff upper lip and all that! But if you argue yourself into a corner, what else can you do?

Celivia,

You can laugh at it now but if you want to live forever, you need to telepathically talk to somebody and symbolically eat His flesh since we've all got something bad inside us because a long time ago, a talking snake told some rib-woman to eat some fruit from a magical tree.

Pass the popcorn.