Mrrzy,

Is ignostic a real term, or just something you made up? Can't find it in my Webster's 9th Collegiate and I don't think I've ever encountered it before. Made me suspect it was your term, and I initially bridled at it, then realized that it's not that I don't care if there's a god (or gods), it's just that I don't think it's relevant to my life.

Arthur C. Clarke had an interesting observation in one of his novels — Rendevous with Rama, I think — on the concepts of good and evil as they relate to god. He said statisticians can prove good and evil don't exist on the human plane because everything that is good for one person or group is bad for another person or group. Makes sense to me. As long as mankind is fighting over scarce resources (food, oil, water, land — whatever), anything that wipes out one side is good for the other. Leaves more for the survivors. Nasty thought, but I can't see any way to argue with it.

Now, if good and evil don't exist, where does that leave our concept of god? Or, more specifically, our concept of evil as personified by the devil? Sorta knocks a lot of religions into a cocked hat, doesn't it?

That is not to rule out that there is a god who is the embodiment of both good and evil, but that also sorta knocks most religions into the dumpster, since most tell us that if we're good, god will favor us. Does that mean that only god gets to be evil with impunity? Come to think of it, maybe that's the case. Maybe we're rewarded for being good, 'cause god wants all the fun of being bad, commiting all the murder and mayhem for his own amusement. Doesn't sound like any god I'd want to worship, but there you are.

I couldn't agree more that any meaningful definition of freedom of religion must include freedom from religion. I'm perfectly willing to let anyone believe anything they want, as long as they don't try to convert me to their belief patterns or persecute me because I don't agree with them.

Growing up in a Presbyterian assembly grounds in North Carolina — and I come from a long line of (mostly) Presbyterian ministers — I quickly learned that believers weren't willing to cut me the same slack I cut them. I guess I just never got the "faith gene" in there and every time somebody told me about how wonderful god or Jesus was, I'd start asking questions. Their response, invariably, was anger. If not at first, always when my questions pushed them to the point at which they had to revert to "faith" and I asked what it was that gave them their faith. I've had many people tell me that my views were obnoxious to them, but I've never had one show any inkling that their views might be obnoxious to me. Faith seems to be a one-way street, albeit a dead end (no pun intended).

I do find blind faith obnoxious. Humans are generally capable of thought, of pushing perceptions past what is here and now to what was and what will be. It's a wonderful facility. Faith blocks that, stunts it, makes it wither. Any thing we believe is something we will never be able to know anything about. We would never push the envelope, never explore, never question anything that is an article of faith. What a waste! That's why I find most faith — and particularly most religions — obnoxious. They draw lines around our knowledge and say (like medieval maps) "beyond this lie demons." My response to that is, thanks for the warning — but maybe it's just YOU that pisses them off.

Enough of that rant.

cheers

david