John, a great read, clear and lucid, just the sort of argument regular defenders of the faith (runner!, polycrap!, can't believe I beat you to the first comment!) will try to denigrate through obfuscation and reliance on the very materials that have created the delusional states in which they find themselves.

Chris Hitchens quotes an ancient Greek Scholar (Epicurus) in his "God is Not Great ..." and I think it sums up the conundrum faced by the religious quite well:

"Is he willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then is he malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Enough said.

;))

I agree - an excellent and succinct article that neatly links religious delusion with mass propensity to irrationality, which often has disastrous consequences.

Like tebbutt, I await the deluge of delusional affront to come.

"...the excessive degree of religious belief in America and elsewhere gives rise to a dysfunctional social and political mentality. Not only America, but the whole world, has been forced to pay the price."

It's finally been said. I'm with CJ - let's wait for someone to explain how it ain't so.

An excellent article - one that says it all. The final paragraph sums up the entire situation.
Thanks too to Tebbutt for an incisive comment. No doubt the likes of runner, Sells, et al will come up with something irrelevent, un-informed, and irrational Judeo/Christian predjudice based as usual, but the main points of the essay seem to me to be beyond rational criticism.
I have already noted in an earlier posting the predeliction of the general American public for collective insanity in various matters - especially the more extreme aspects of an already extreme and unsubstantiated religious belief (ie christianity) - an insanity that also inter alia includes the farce presently being played out (in full colour, quadrophonic sound and wide screen TV) generally known as American politics. Thanks be to Bhudda it will soon be over - at least for now.
I would however make the point that Australia, largely as a result of the on-going pandering by successive governments (including the present labor government) to the various christian religious factions via parliamentary prayers, religion driven policies and legislative outcomes, highly disproportionate school funding aimed at the eventual destruction of the secular public school system, massive taxation concessions, local government rating concessions, financial support of numerous religious festivals, and the over-arching (and totally unsubstantiated) ridiculous assumption that church organisations are 'charities' and are therefore exempt from any number of controls and levies born by the general business communities and the public in general. In short, we are not all that far behind America in this regard - a situation that is a cause for concern among all thinking Australians.

I too applaud this article. After attempting to reason with the unreasonable on so many of these threads, I find that John Perkins' analysis strikes a pure and honest note amid the gabble of religious proselytising, damnation and double-speak.

As a result of the 'Gibos', 'Poly-Boaz', 'Katie0' et al, I am in full agreement with Nietzsche when he says:

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true."

I do not believe in God, Satan or any religion. But I wonder why people like this author have to bash people who do. I respect or don’t care about what other people choose to believe, and I don’t have to shore up my own lack of belief by attacking what other people’s beliefs on God and religion are.

The author is the founding member of the Secular Party of Australia. Fair enough if he wants to form a party standing for nothing in societies where religion is separate from state – parliamentary prayers are just a hoary old tradition quite obviously ignored by politicians – but, apart from ridiculing people he thinks are wrong, he is obviously out to ‘convert’ (to secularism) and is as much a ‘preacher’ for his cause as are bible –bashers.

Connecting religion with the so-called global-crisis in economy with his ‘faith based’ decisions which he thinks led to the crisis, is wrong. While praying for rain (Costello and Howard) was clearly ridiculous, and I totally agree with that and the author’s comparison praying for the car to repair itself, the economy, and the ‘invasion’ of Iraq (what about Afghanistan?) had nothing to do with religion from the West’s point of view. Using (as an argument against religious faith) any politician who says, “God made me do it”, (Bush) is hollow in view of the fact that we all know the U.S’s reasons for going into Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with faith. On Tony Blair (a deeply religious man) the author hints that only those with religious beliefs would do something because they “believed it was right”, even if they don’t “admit (ted) to hearing the Word”. Anyone who ‘does the right thing’ is hide-bound religious nutter,
apparently.

The world’s problems today are not caused be faith; they are caused by politics, greed and selfishness. I have no reason to defend religion. But in this case, what John Perkins claims just isn’t so.