Not too good that, o Guest. There's a complicated picture here all right. About half the world's people adhere to one or the other major religions. I happen to think that religious belief is deluded. I have no time for bogus disciplines such as theology (am I losing friends??). I think that organised religion is, first and foremost, a very earth-bound way of keeping people in check (and it works far better and for far longer than any political regime in history, no matter how authoritarian, you can name). But here's the thing. I really would like to change the world, but I will never do it. So I need a different gambit. It's best not to call masses of people deluded. They are, in most aspects of their lives, no such thing, and I'd better confront that. Better to assert that religious belief is deluded (a notion from which I cannot be swayed) but that people, on the whole, are just fine, because (uncomfortable though it may be for big religion) religious belief informs people's everyday lives in only the slightest, most tangential way, on the whole (I know there are exceptions, of course). Their path is not mine, but their end result may be just as "good" (go on, argue...) as mine. If I don't acknowledge that, I've lost the argument. Having conceded a fair bit there, I then turn sharply around and tell believers that they'd better shut up about their faith imbuing them with their moral framework. That is the most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Find one atheist with superb moral values and that bogus tenet is immediately shot to pieces. You do not need religion to be good. Some very bad people claim to be religious and some very good people have no interest in the Almighty. And vice versa, of course. Next, I find it very tiresome when I hear religious people rattling on about their "spirituality". If you boast about your spirituality, as one or two people here are wont to do, what you are actually saying is that you have assumed for yourself a mysterious dimension to your existence that raises you above the other poor souls around you. There is nothing more conceited than claiming that you are a "spiritual person". Get off your arse and tell us what you are actually on about! I love nature. I'm an expert on the wild flowers of the British countryside and I know loads about birds and butterflies as well. I've taught myself about geology and meteorology too, and I have a stunning collection of cloud photographs. I can go outside right now and show you where that new comet is supposed to be (bloody clouds...) I'm not swanning around like some around here telling people how spiritual I am. I'm out there loving all that I see around me and I can't get enough of it. That leaves me precious little time for contemplating my spiritual navel. I have a bit more time to waste posting to this forum at the moment because of my bad back, but once that gets fixed I won't have time for this! I love the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, and my knowledge of the latter two would lose most people. I never miss a chance to visit local churches and cathedrals alike and I stood in front of a Titian Madonna for half an hour last year, transfixed. Spiritual was it? Of course not! Mysticism is in the eye of the conceited delusionals only. I have never had a vision, an out-of-body wotsit or a transcendental moment that I haven't managed to come back from (helped, perhaps, by the fact that I have never taken an illicit drug in my sheltered life). The Lord hath never appeareth unto me, nor hath he spake unto me in a dream. My back's wrecked, my tinnitus plagues me and I was born with bad bones. But I'm here and because I'm here I'm a winner. What I've got is great, and a damn sight better than what most people have got (though a bit more more Talisker would be useful), and I don't need no God to pester for even more!