Perhaps pete, most people don't think in those terms at all. Must people think of where they are going for their holidays or how to pay the mortgage this month.

I have noticed how those too frail to get on with life without a crutch to lean on or a comfort blanket to suck on tend to assume that everyone else is as unstable as they are.

Mind you, those who feel very stable about their religion tend to he the ones to watch out for.

Tunesmith is correct when saying in The USA it is difficult to run for office without thanking Jesus for the opportunity, leading gullible voters into thinking they are religious regardless of whether that is a fish thrown to the clapping seals. You see it with TV evangelists asking their viewers to forgive them for using donations to pay for sex and drugs.

Here in The UK, neither the deputy prime minister nor leader of the opposition are superstitious and the Prime Minister only started professing faith after he got to lead his party. Newspapers have noticed he never goes to church unless it includes a political opportunity.

Many churches profess numbers they don't have and because of the appalling faith schools recent religious politicians have promoted and funded, many people quite rightly say they are religious just to get their children into a nearby school with good results. Ironically, faith schools are getting their comeuppance lately with both the Islamic debacle in Birmingham, a couple if schools caught teaching creationism as a fact and the school Tony Blair sent his son to has been caught asking parents to attend Catholic Church and produce baptism records as a condition of accepting their children. All highly illegal and liable to criminal prosecution.

As I said at the beginning of this thread, one stone tablet at a time. Secular education and ending religious bigotry on sexual orientation, abortion, genital mutilation of children and telling creationist lies to them as fact are the next milestones.