Well said, Little Hawk!!

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Smedley, referring to your post of 30 Jan 10 - 02:49 a.m., please forgive me if I assumed you were not fully cognizant of the history of religions or of the extent of doctrinal decisions. What you posted—very similar in tone to the previous knee-jerk anti-religion posts—led me to believe that was the case.

On the one hand, many people seem to assume that "religion" is a monolithic body of belief and summarily dismiss all of it. Oddly enough, the very same people will point to religious people with contempt and say, "See? They can't agree about anything!" Well—you can't have it both ways.

In the meantime, there is a large number of churches—of a number of different denominations—who set their differences aside and cooperate ecumenically and do a tremendous about of good in the world, more often than not filling in holes in what might be called the "social safety net."

At least, that's the case in the United States.

Several of the churches (not all the same denomination) in my neighborhood cooperate to make sure that the unemployed and homeless in the area have somewhere to go to get a good, nutritious meal every day (usually within a church's facilities and manned by volunteers from the congregation—and no, they do not have to pay for the meal by listening to a sermon!), and the church to which I belong, in addition to participating in this program, is deeply involved in finding low-cost housing for low income people or temporary no-cost housing for people who would otherwise have to sleep on the streets. And that's only a part of what they do.

When aspects of religion make the news media, it's usually to report something highly outrageous (and patently un-Christian) such as pompous pronouncements by self-ordained demagogues like Pat Roberson or Jerry Falwell. Such as Robertson's recent remark about how the Haitian earthquake was God's punishment visited on Haitians because they practice voodoo!!!

Idiot!!

Nevertheless, this is the kind of stuff that makes the news. And an amazingly large number of people who have no religious affiliation assume that this sort of mean-spirited stupidity reflects the beliefs of all Christians (I would question whether people like Robertson can honestly call themselves "Christian" at all). The same way so many people seem to assume that every Muslim is automatically a terrorist. I know a fair number of Muslims (a fellow named Moustafa lives in the same building I do)—peaceful, kind-hearted people, like most of the Christians I know—and they despair over the negative beliefs that so many people have about them.

Due to ignorance.

So please forgive me if I have knee-jerk reactions of my own from time to time. But most of the time, my "knee-jerk reaction" happens to be highly appropriate to what I am reacting to.

Don Firth