Susan

"OK-- bash the "religionists" in the same post where you call for tolerance."

I do call for tolerance. Religion has historically to answer for the crimes it has committed in society. Not all religionists do this, there are some who are moral people. There are those who do no harm in their belief system. Unfortunately, they enable those who do harm to survive.


" The usual result would be a polarized "religionist" reacting to this post by asking how many dead (aborted) babies you counted in your statistics, and the polarized secularists responding "tolerantly" be defending the "right" of abortion instead of understanding the pain they had caused with such an inflammatory post."

The right to "abortion", I prefer to call it "pro-choice" is an inalienable right. The right of women to keep from being crushed by the rock of religious paternalism is as important as the Black Civil Rights movement.

As to causing pain, religionists have been doing this to years to secular humanists and conveniently step away from this act by hiding behind some dogmatic dictum. Religion has caused pain to many and this must be faced by those who claim morality in light of their belief system.


"Yeah, there's no need to "seek to understand rather than to be understood." Better just to fling unsupported opinion as if "we" all not only "know" all thes same facts but should see them the same way and therefore DO see them the same way. "

There is nothing in religion that can claim supported scientific facts. I think that secularists can be sympathetic to cultural memes and how they turn into delusions without denegrating the person behind the belief.

"We ALL want to be "understood," but there's nothing "comfortable" about any of this, is there?"

Ultimately, being understood is about behavior and actions. Professing beliefs that can't be proven or disproven is easy.

"Yeah, why even try to reach greater understanding, or create a climate where it might eventually be possible-- we (human beans) prefer to fight."

The greater understanding is not necessarilly on the side of religion. Historically, it has obscured scientific understanding and placed the believers in a defensive posture that enables them to lash out angrilly when problems with their belief system are presented to them. Understanding is not always clear but in order for there to be a kind of understanding, the religious believers must accept their responsibility for muddy waters which lead to auto-de-fe's, gay-bashing, slavery, the destruction of women's rights, the trashing of science, the terrorism of anti-choice and the promotion of war and hypocritical greed, not to mention the fanatical behavior of suicidal terrorists and unrestrained "Dimionists".

"I'm convinced."

I'm not convinced of anything rigid. I believe that if science could show unequivocally the existence of a god, many secularists would be open to the idea and would change their minds. Unfortunately, religionists have created the climate whereby this question is not allowed in their arena. They refuse to apply scientific methods to determine this question.
Stephen Jay Gould referred to this as "NOMA", (no overlapping magesteria) where religion and science must in his mind always remain apart and science has no claim to question religion.

It's strange that whenever religion is questioned, the believer becomes sensitive and accusatory of the questioner somehow claiming that the sancrosanct belief is being attacked. And yet, the reverse behavior by the religionist toward the secularist is usually never respected. At least not in the USA where a secularist non-believer can never successfully run for government office.

Frank Hamilton