It seems that in a great number of these posts, religious belief and organized religion is understood to be some sort of mindless abandonment of self to strict obedience to some sort of fundamentalist doctrine. In other words, religion is defined as fundamentalism; and since fundamentalism is bad, religion must be bad.

I suppose that it follows that if religions have doctrines, then religious education must be indoctrination.

I dunno. That's just not my experience. I had 16 years of Catholic education; and half of that was in a seminary, studying to become a priest. I suppose that some of my teachers were more interested in indoctrination than in education, but that wasn't the case with most of them. I learned to view Catholic teachings, practices, and organization with a respectful but critical eye - like a concerned citizen might view his country when the "other party" is in power. I ended up part of the "loyal opposition" in the Catholic Church, although I've always been proud to be a Catholic.

In my town, the Christian religions fall generally into two groups - the born-agains, and the "mainstream" Christians and Catholics. The born-agains have their joint activities; and we mainstreamers have ours. The "mainstream" denominations all have some ivory-tower fundamentalists; but most of the people in these denominations seem to be quite open to a wide spectrum of thought, while feeling most comfortable in their own tradition and form of religious expression. they also seem to have a concern for those in the community who are in need.

Anyway, my point is that religion and fundamentalism are not necessarily synonymous, and that we non-fundamentalist religious people can actually be reasonably stable and productive citizens (...given proper supervision and medication...).

A beer now and then is all I need.

-Joe Offer-