Back to an earlier part of this thread, about who thinks what and why.. My father was a lapsed Catholic, (Oz-Irish background) & reacted very strongly against the Church. My mother was a former Oz-Scottish Presbyterian sunday school teacher, who left the church and all things religious in her late twenties. They had four kids and brought us up agnostic. The oldest child took on the heavy athiesm of my father, the next two were mildly agnostic, and i became Buddhist.

We all inherited leftist views.

Looking back on it all, I realised that while my father became strongly anti Catholic, a lot of the ideals he instilled in us (fairness, social conscience, service, helping, whatever) he learnt from the church. My mother also spent years helping voluntarily in various community organisations, that prasctise of service she also learnt in her church. I have also noticed Christians who move into Eastern based religions who go in, become "converted", "initiated" whatever, and take in a whole lot of views and attitudes about religion that they learnt in their original church/culture.

It is very hard to examine our own attitudes and work out what came from where - so much of how we interact is based on what we learnt in the family home. But for people who are religious, all their actions, positive and negative, will ultimately be viewed by others in terms of their professed religious ideals. That's the way the world is.