One-under-god............I have often wondered, is English your first language - your mother tongue ?

aww snake....give him a break...I enjoy reading his rants. I ge to spend hours trying to understand what the point is. Perhaps we could have competition about the hidden meaning. You know...a bit like the Da Vinci code.

GENESIS 3:19 should suffice

The author is being too simplistic in assuming that belief in life after death is the sole motivator for religious belief.

Many Christians don’t believe in life after death – I’m one, Peter Sellick is another.

Sells’ articles here draw the distinction between folk religion and authentic Christianity:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=491
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4777

For much of its history Judaism had no belief in life after death as a place of pleasure or punishment. The Hebrew Scriptures mention only the vague and rather gloomy belief in Sheol, the place of shades, which had no theological significance. Judaism is the forerunner and antecedent of both Christianity and Islam. It’s not historically sustainable to argue that belief in an afterlife is “the true genesis (pun intended) and rationale behind religion as we know it.”

Jesus’ message was overwhelmingly about how we are to live, not about what happens when we die.

I don’t deny that inability to face the truth of mortality underlies many believers’ hope in a heaven as a pleasant abode for the virtuous dead. But there is far more to all religions than that

I've known plenty of religious people, both good and bad.

Funny though that militant athiests are invariably intolerant, sneering tools.

Brett summarizes

'Letting religion obscure your rationality is your own personal problem unless and until you drag the rest of us into your strange little world.'

I would suggest that Brett's self righteousness blinds him of his need of forgiveness and a Saviour. His ridiculous notion that religion causes more pain and death than the god deniers is a straight out deceit. Just look at the number of people killed by Marxist and more recently the millions of murdered unborn babies. Brett really needs a bit of honesty or a calculator.

'Using your religion as a pretext to cause others pain is an obscenity.'

It seems to me that those who fight against the Only One who can heal peoples pain are doing far more of a dis service than most. Most pain is caused by either one's own disobedience to God or someone else's disobedience. Brett adds to peoples pain by failing to acknowledge the Only Physician who can heal a persons life and give them eternal life.

'Believe in whatever helps you get through the day but spare us the sermons - and the violence.'

After giving a sermon to others Brett then concludes by demanding others don't give him a sermon. A touch of hypocrisy I would say. The violence is more likely to come from the mother's womb than the Salvation Army or Mother Teresa.