My dictionary (Merriam Webster) gives this as one of the definitions of prejudice:

An irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.

Generally, when you take an entire class of people and ascribe the actions of a few members to the entire group, that's prejudice. It seems that sort of prejudice is the "religion" of several people here at Mudcat. They're just as self-righteous about their prejudice, as the worst of the religious people they condemn.

You want a list of prejudiced statements, just from this thread? Here are a few:

• Religion makes me sick (later changed at the poster's request to: People who hide behind religion to justify their actions, make me sick)
  
• It is aggravating, but not surprising, when the religious apologists chime in on cases like this with "it's not religion". Sorry, but it is. These people were not executed because of their perceived hostility to broccoli, or synchronised swimming, or the novels of Ernest Hemingway.
     Yeah, OK, it's about religion - but what we object to, is the implication that it's about ALL religion. We are religious people, and believe it or not, we're not like that at all.
  
• Those who rule Islam make me sick.
  Those who worship the true Islam need to get their voices out..and shout "NOT IN OUR NAME!" from every mosque in the Middle East...
     Fact of the matter is, many Muslim leaders and many Muslims have made all sorts of efforts to do just this - check out Websites like http://islam101.net/

Those of us at Mudcat who are religious, have made no attempt to deny the wrongdoing of religious groups, including our own. What we object to, are the wide-sweeping generalizations that condemn all religion so frequently here. There is prejudice here at Mudcat - lots of it - and it disgusts me.

-Joe Offer-