While the poor may be always with us, how many religious groups say that poverty should be everlasting? It certainly is true that poverty has outlasted most ideologies, but I don't think there are many religious groups that encourage the eternal continuation of poverty.

For that matter, there are a number of Mudcatters who are religious in one way or another - how many of them do bad as a result of their religious beliefs?

I still contend that the original premise of this thread is a fallacy, which is a nice way of saying it started out bigoted. There's certainly plenty of evidence that people sometimes do bad things in the name of religion, but is that always (or even usually) the case? That certainly hasn't been proven in this thread.

-Joe Offer-