As a wise man said "No agnostic have ever started a war, pogrom, or ethnic cleansing. Most mass slaughter is done in the name of religion." Hitler had a Nazi Christmas which sits between theist and atheist but he was pretty definite about Aryan Master Race Gott Mit Uns.
Charities have to pass the squeaky clean test and Agnostic Semi-Believers Moral Support and Detox may just get the nod.

O Sung Wu
". there is no God, otherwise he'd certainly put a stop to the mayhem that was Vietnam in the late 1960's early 1970's."
Choppers fly in , sarge says go, go and the grunts load into Huey.
"( mutter mutter) HQ says there's some guy with enormous hands and lightning who cancelled the flight. Says there's Catholic VC dug in on Hamburger Hill. No go. Unload weapons. Burn the chopper. Amen"

Nick
So, I am now lifted to the lofty height of wise man?

You may be right about the squeaky clean in Australia, but I can tell you from a commune where I once lived, in NZ, and the numerous churches I saw while in the US, it all depends on your connections.

Chris

nicknamenick,

Child sex abuse is not systemic within law societies, or amongst accounting firms or mechanics’ shops. Whether it occurs in these areas is not the issue. Lawyers aren’t shuffling each other around to evade legal action. Your analogy is invalid.

--

Lefty One,

In Australia, it has been argued by some that the tax we miss out on due to the tax exemption that churches get (around $31 billion) is out-weighed by the dollar value that churches provide in charity. However, the figures upon which this claim is based are highly dubious and are contested by many.

One thing’s for sure, though, the above certainly wouldn’t be the case in the US with their billion-dollar megachurches and some preachers getting around in private jets and living in multi-million-dollar mansions.

John Oliver did a good expose on televangelists and just how easy it is in the US to set up one’s own tax-exempt church by creating his own church that he called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg
http://www.ourladyofperpetualexemption.com

As for your own position on the question of a god or gods, what you describe is actually closer to deism. Agnosticism is the belief that the existence of any god or gods is unknown or unknowable. So agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive. Theism and atheism address what one believes, while gnosticism and agnosticism address what one believes is knowable.

http://goo.gl/LuyGaC

I was meaning abuse within the home, by anybody. Sex offenders move around . Atheist incest is not preferable to the theist.
Defence forces sex-abuse has elements of Church protection .

Everything is belief, atheists wait for non-deity answers to be served up by men in white coats and white-board symbols

Well, people rarely if at all pop out of the womb "reasonable & rationale."

It takes time, education and personal development.

I had a "religious phase" in my youth wherein I was steeped in "Left of Main" ideology, allegory and fanciful interpretation. Reason came later with a study of legal studies and a group of friends who share and debate "new scientist" articles, amongst other things.

I would add that it is a damning indictment upon the secondary education system that too many kids come out anything but reasonable and rationale. I would like to see the reasons given by the various state based curriculum development bodies as to why some things are taught and some things are not.

When you get down to the manner in which "we" reckon things then most if not all of us have at least had a transitory phase wherein we reckoned things in a more rudimentary fashion, much as an unsophisticated religious intellect may.

So, to fast track things my sense of some writers is that they would prefer that some atheists would temper their intellects such that the potentially mutually beneficial process of sharing knowledge and reasoning out solutions is not unnecessarily painful, hurtful or denigrating in some way. Of course, it would be fair to say that such atheists are not educators.

I would also agree though that there are some obtuse cases, who fail to respond to reason and whose actions are profoundly hurtful to others to the extent that they well and truly deserve a taste of the "intellect whip" (and that just for starters)