I understand that, but facing the truth is better in my opinion. I feel that if people are honest then forward movement, and acceptance, is more possible. If you asked someone "why don't you want gays to get married?" and they say "The bible." then how can you argue? They have most likely been indoctrinated and brainwashed by religion and have lost the ability to think logically.

If they say "because it's gross/wrong/unnatural/perverted" these are all statements that can be fairly easily refuted. It may not convince them, but at least it is a step forward.

I feel you Angie. I think religion has been divisive and destructive myself. I guess I was just thinking of that second scenario you illustrated. I don't think we'd be able to convince people to leave their ignorance behind even if they weren't clutching their bibles or Korans or whatever.

Thankfully, adherence/devotion to organized religion is on the decline all around the world. It might take a while, but I think we will see in our life time, the collapse of organized religious faiths as people wake up and realize what wholesale fraud much of it is. It's already happening. Church parishes are going to the wall as attendences plummet and churches are having to amalgamate just to remain viable. Compensation claims against churches - both Prodestant and Catholic - are at an all time high and escalating as people call them out on their sins. People will only tolerate so much kiddy fucking until they start railing and baying for blood.

The Catholic and Prodestant will be reduced to the level of a cult and it will be apt to ask the question "Where's your Messiah now!?"

NO!!! The PNW is way too awesome to be 'Merica. Besides, we have all of the best breweries.

religion is one of those places where we just can't damn have nice things. submission to service; radical love; forgiveness; mercy; grace. oneness. we're all headed somewhere--probably escaping as heat from our dead tissues--but, whatever it is we're doing, it gives meaning and gets done better when we do it together. Religion in times of lesser hysteria on a community level provides the safe space for those things to happen oftentimes being the only acceptable place to be vulnerable or get support during hard times. i think it was emotionally needful in my hometown for the miners to have a place to deal with their insides and a designated day to spend time with the reasons they were working so hard.

it's disappointing and in no way surprising we can't have these nice things stay nice.

And I think that's the point of an atheist group. What if you can have all of the above without the underlying NON-acceptance and hate?

THAT'S the point of atheist meetings. Because it's the meetings part that everyone really needs.

on the money, keet.

That is it Sparrow! It's time be be like "no, you fucked it up... and now we're taking it away."

What did we fight over with the first civil war? the North making it hard for the South to make money.

I agree with you. If religion disappeared tomorrow, human beings would just devise some other social tool to categorize and separate each other into "teams." Tribal mentality is the nasty underbelly of our survival instinct. We obsessively try to identify who is "one of us" and who is "one of them." I'm not justifying it -- it leads to a lot of bloodshed and terrible things. But religion is just one arbitrary tool that we use to do it. We'd come up with something else if religion didn't exist.