[Stormcaller]

(Claps hands and nods head to Bob's comment)

There are NO magic bullets. Religion is not a magic bullet and NEITHER is avoiding all religion.

What I see with all the Richard Dawkins book advocates is the same as what I see with the Bible advocates. They are both SOO sure they are right and that the other party is wrong. They also believe that they are inherently smarter than the "simple people" who believe the opposite. And that they will be able to feed off their own self-righteousness for all eternity.

Can't you both see your arguments against each other are sometimes arrogant and ignorant?

And don't bore me with Richard Dawkin's theories about why being an Atheist truly is "smarter" than being in a dogmatic religion. I've read the book (and many other books of the same theme before Dawkin's time - that some Dawkin thumpers have never even heard of). And I'm not Dogmatic myself.

Religion has got a bad name because it is a set of beliefs that a large group of people are told to believe without question. This does not always work for everyone, and my suspicion is that it does not work for most. But can't the anti-religious people see that their hate for dogmatic rules and quest for "truth" is based on a similarly biased opinion that all mass beliefs are wrong. "the crowd is wrong" and yet, these anti-religious people all spout off the same old boring information about why the Christian bible is wrong and contradicts itself and yadda yadda. Also... the Dawkins book has some flawed logic on many points he tries to make, and philosophy was my minor in university, so I know logic. Dawkins does not ALWAYS use proper logic. He omits possibilities at the start without mentioning them and runs with the one possibility he wants to prove right against a few other possibilities that are obviously going to lose out against the one possibility he is tryin to make a point of. Also he makes the assumption you should either be atheist or religious (and he later proves his point in the book that it makes more sense to be atheist). This is a flawed assumption right off the bat, because there are more possibilities than being religious or atheist or agnostic (I think those were his three). There is an interesting and relevant quote by Nagarjuna pointing out the flawed logic in Western Logic... I will find the exact quote when I have time.

You have beliefs too whether you know it or not. You can not live without belief... and I don't mean that metaphorically, I mean it physically. It's just a fact. When you are CONSCIOUS (physically) you are creating beliefs from data that your sensory organs are sending you. Because the senses only operate, it’s what you make in your mind and brain (the beliefs you form) about the signals your eyes, ears, nose and skin etc. that matter. This is belief. You can’t go around not believing in belief. Just because you do not trust religion, does not mean you are belief-less.