Steve Paul  wrote
>Chris.B wrote:
>> On Oct 16, 7:21 am, Roger Hunt  wrote:
>>>
>>> I prefer to put the price of card and stamp into a Cancer Research
>>> charity collection tin.
>>> Just imagine how much good a million times that sum could do, rather
>>> than a mountain of cards which are of no practical use whatsoever.
>>
>> Amen!  Let the real doctors have a real chance to cure the suffering
>> of millions before one priest gets a chance to kill one sick child.
>> You'd think with each new iteration of religion that they would
>> improve their usefulness for the majority. All they ever offer is pain
>> and suffering if you don't believe. And grinding poverty of the
>> intellect if you do. Religion is a human reaction to having too small
>> a mind to cope with the size and complexity of our universe. Or even
>> our own despoiled world. The bible is the village mentality written
>> down for pedants. Not one second in everlasting torment would have
>> been be wasted, in your vision of hell, if it left my mind unscathed
>> by your dangerous, superstitious nonsense. Religion offers no filter
>> or instrument which aids vision or understanding of anything but the
>> crippled inadequacy of the average human mind to cope with the very
>> ordinary.
>>
>> Better dead than a bible read.
>
>I could just as easily say that it takes a large, open mind to suspend 
>disbelief, ignore the blatant violations of human rights and the laws of 
>physics, and process enough of scripture to see that there is a lot of good 
>and moral teaching in it (no matter what religion).
>
>But I won't. :-)
>
>Just like brushing away sand in search of evidence of the physical, one must 
>brush away the inadequaciesof scripture, to see evidence of the spiritual. 
>In either case, one first has to _want_ to find it.
>
Sometimes one becomes aware of the Spiritual without a prior want.
It can be a stormy time.
>There are two kinds of people in this world (yeah, that's right, just two 
><snerk>), those who see the good, and those who see the bad. The Fransican's 
>say, "Better to light a candle, than to curse the darkness."
>
>We accomplish more in the next generation by our example, than we do by all 
>of our chest thumping. My example to my kids is not to eviscerate their 
>beliefs, but to encourage the consideration of other possibilities.
>
>In spite of the existence or non-existence of some divine source of the 
>universe or multiverse, it is men that are evil, and men that are good, and 
>the gods they imagine, are are a reflection of who they are.
>
>My god is good, and kick's ass whenever someone's bad god appears. I know 
>this to be true, because I haven't killed anyone yet. ;-)
>
Quite. Faith needs no religion as a vehicle.
-- 
Roger Hunt