Dear David and Constance
Your respective "religons" have maimed, killed and enslaved people for you and your co-religonists vanity. It is all just superstitious nonsense usually promoted by people for their own particular power trip.
For goodness sake, you seem sensible educated people, just think it through and stop behaving in so weird a fashion albeit one that has been going on for centuries. Now both of you stop talking and start thinking.

Dear JBowyer,

You are mixing up colonisers with missionaries. They did not have the same approach. You should broaden your perspective - be more open-minded. Enough is enough - as it has not been fair enough. I'm just reacting to the unbalanced, unthoughtful and dismissive diatribe by the hardcore anti-religionists, who also tend to put all religions in the same basket without any analysis. I'm no holy Joe and have never defended Catholicsm at all before. But I have had a gutful of this selective judgement. I'm thinking, how about you?

Where's my mate, David gone? I need more talking.

Constance: I think that you are saying all the other religions are doing it wrong unlike you, but then they are saying exactly the same.
My problem is the total stupidity of people talking about a god and then oppressing others in the name of that god. Just stop it! You are all the same from the dopey jews right up to the crazed scientologists. You have all oppressed others and its all your fault,collectively that is.
I am an atheist and I really do not want to stop any religion as it only encourages them anyway but I have no thoughts of superiority I can assure you. Actually there is no way I can stop anyone doing anything much less indulge in all this superstitious nonsense.
I reckon David's brains have burst from thinking about religion too much!

I am not saying I'm right, they're wrong at all. It is just so simplistic to say they are all the same which is not really true. I'm just saying that anti-religionists do not analyse religions, because they just don't do that, do they? Selective dismissive judgements is not adequate for any genuine debate.

Music today would be poorer if we didn't have for example the African American gospel singers that have so much inspired other musicians. Music which I enjoy today. That and other art that religion has inspired. Think about?

Dear Constance,

I have been in Sydney for a few days. That is why I have not been participating in this discussion. While I was in Sydney I attended the 80th birthday party of a Marxist. There was a lot of good food. Most of the people there were Marxist believers, but I am not. Two musicians played the “Internationale”, and most of the assemblage lustily sang along. After approximately 100,000,000 Marxist generated corpses they can still believe.

Although Buddhism is regarded as a religion of peace that most violent group of men, the Japanese officer corps, in WW2 were almost all Buddhists. Currently the Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka have backed the bloody suppression of the Tamils.

Uncritical belief in having a truth denied to others is found in both religion and secular philosophies. That sort of belief has led to atrocity. Marxist and Buddhist believers can exhibit as great cruelty as believers in God.

I also talked with a man who assured me that Prime Minister Rudd was trying to destroy Christianity. I pointed out that he has just allocated 26 billion dollars to independent schools mostly Christian. He retorted, “A big coverup.” His paranoid fantasies can be found at http://www.cosepp.com/. Click on Police Persecution, Barbarism, Tortures... of Joseph Costa, in Australia.

Went to hear a talk in Sydney parliament house by John Keane, author of “The Life and Death of Democracy”. He spoke of the tremendous devotion to democracy by poor people in India. The poorer they are the more likely they are to vote. During question time an Indian in the audience remarked that the voting turnout among poor people was simply due to the fact they got paid to vote, and they needed the money. It was evidence of corruption not devotion. Professor Keane was another uncritical believer. Nevertheless he has written a good book.

Sorry Constance, I really do not wish to be rude to you but what you say is said by all religions.
Join us, give us your all and we will look after you and you will have eternal life. The only difference between Mohammed the violent fraudster, Jesus's disciples and Joseph Smith is two fifths of stuff all. The passage of time allows the past to be sanitised and for religions to then claim, as they do now, that they are a special case. The rules of common sense do not apply to us, black is white, up is down.
Personally I believe religion is a personality trait in humans that we need, sorry you need to be ruled. I am married so I already have a ruler thanks.