This exciting new information:
Check out BLACK MASS--Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, the latest book by John Gray
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About the British academic, philosopher, professor, writer, social critic, and a broad-brush skeptic, John Gray. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray

He, a self-described skeptic, calls this age as, "an age of the crusading atheists..."

He refers to Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and others like them, "as evangelists for atheism...secular believers with faiith in their own set of creeds and myths...They are militant, vehement, dogmatic...which point to the religious origin of their faith." His words, not mine.

RELIGION
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Keep in mind, the root meaning of religion comes from the word 'ligament'. Ligaments hold the physical body together. Philosophically speaking, religion is that which can hold people together as a community, or group.

Broadly speaking, any social institution that includes a set of commonly held beliefs can be called a religion, even when, like superstition, such beliefs are contra to common sense and reason.

BTW, there is, also, such a thing as a non-theistic religion. For example, Buddhism is a non-theistic religion.

Theologically speaking, religion, as it is commonly understood, is based on a fixed set of theological beliefs--in a god, or gods--as set forth, by a founder, and/or in a book or in a collections of sayings, and passed on to disciples and followers. Christians and Jews have what we call the Bible. Muslims have the Koran. The practice of such religions usually involves prayer, ritual, ethics and morality--laws of personal behaviour.

Religion can encompass ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experiences. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared convictions.

THE DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM OF, AND FREEDOM FROM, RELIGION
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Personally speaking, as one who believes in democracy, I even refuse to impose any fixed-position kind of religion on myself. I want to be free to thnk, at all times. Therefore, I feel that no society should ever have the right to impose religion on any other individual.

FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM
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You and I must have the freedom of religion and freedom from religion, if we so choose. I will write more on this. Meanwhile, your input will be welcome.


Last edited by Revlgking; 12/01/07 11:31 PM.

G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org