Mousethief - Ah, dear, dear...how words lead us astray. They just don't say enough.

Okay...McGrath has explained what I meant in saying that we all contradict ourselves at times...I was NOT speaking of conscious lies, but of the fact that on one day..or at one point in your life...you may see something radically differently than you do on another day. Thus you may in time contradict a position you formerly held...and in all honesty. If this hasn't happened to someone, then they are either a robot...or they are seriously mentally ill...like some religious fanatics.

For instance, it's easy to hate a specific group of people (because your parents did...), and then actually meet some of them...and end up really liking them. Point taken? The fact that we are able to change our minds and contradict ourselves is a damn good thing.

Reincarnation in the Christian religion - Mousethief, there are numerous highly regarded spiritual books that talk about this...but I suspect that you would give those books as short a shrift as the common atheist does to a book like...the Bible. Thus, I hesitate to list their titles, but I'm giving it some thought. Remember that the Church of Rome (and Constantinople) did everything in its power to destroy utterly all people who did not hold to its official line, and then ask yourself why the teaching is not found in the conventional sources of that church...and the other churches that split off from it after the Protestant Reformation, by which time the teaching of reincarnation was entirely forgotten by virtually everyone alive in Christendom.

There are more people on the face of the Earth who believe in reincarnation right now (I mean among the Earth's consciously religious people, that is...not including atheists)...than who don't. Debate that one. The greatest number of them are in Asia.

Grab - by "small crimes" I meant crimes that affect one person or a few people directly. By "large crimes" I meant social and financial and governmental policies which cause misery to millions of people. I did not mean that the "small crimes" were small in a moral sense, only in a sense of how many people they directly affect at the time.

I don't like the "small criminals" any more than you do, but I regard them mostly as a mere symptom of a far larger problem...which is social injustice on a huge scale, all over this world. The USA in this sense is a more unjust society than most of the countries in Western Europe, and than Canada as well. I don't say that to say the USA is "bad" or that Americans are "bad", just to say maybe they are not as aware of conditions beyond their own borders as they could be. Live in Canada for a year and see. (I am assuming you're American...if I am mistaken...then these points are not for you but for those who are American). The US media doesn't tell its people about social progress in other countries. It just tells them about Arab terrorists and sensational stuff like that....which is the exception, not the rule, across this world.