Bill, I'm not blanketly excusing religion (or religionS in general), what I am saying is that it is both untrue and unjust to blanketly condemn religion outright, for the actions of some religious people or institutions as many on this web site are wont to do.

There were such things as the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials and the Church's demanding that Galileo "recant" for speaking about what he actually saw through his telescope—all kinds of things like that—and on into religious organizations like "The Family" feeding the Ugandan anti-homosexual campaign, and, for that matter, wanting to take over the United States government.

But—neither is it just to condemn all religion, religious belief, and religious activity because of these things. These are the actions of specific individuals or specific religious institutions—not of religion in general.

I have personal experience with the immense amount of good that religious institutions do with the social programs that a number of churches are involved in in my area—and I know of similar programs of the churches in other areas. I could go into specifics (rather than all churches condemning homosexuality, for example, I know of several within a couple of miles of where I live who will perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, whether the law recognizes the union or not), but there are large areas of activity such as providing food and housing for poor and homeless to less widespread things such as visiting shut-ins and people in nursing homes and hospitals, not with the idea of "evangelizing" them, but in the spirit of, "Is there anything you need?" These folks do one helluva lot of good that simply would not get done otherwise.

And the churches encourage the members of their congregations to do this sort of thing. And the pastors and ministers themselves consider this to be one of the major duties of their job (Matthew 25:35-40).

Frankly, when I see this sort of thing going on, and then I hear or read someone rattling on about how evil and rotten "religion" is, my response to this is a simple and direct, "You don't know what you are talking about!"

Don Firth