I've changed my attitude on how I treat the religious. I was of the mind that the personal beliefs of any individual were their beliefs and however bizarre or fallacious they were, individuals had the right to hold those beliefs if it made them happy. I now think this is harmful to the collective. We have to evolve socially toward survivability. Holding on to actual non-physical descriptions of reality are not forwarding that evolution. I was, in social interactions, tolerant of people referring empirically to Gawd and faith and heaven and the inner city because I felt it was their right to be self delusional. What has changed my mind is the realization that our herd mentality will be one of the last things to go in our social evolution. The masses continue to worship celebrities, royalty, politicians, and fads blindly and recklessly. It is therefore more responsible to point out the absurdities of religion than allow their easy, salacious, and moribund transfer to the masses. If pointing out the ridiculous nature of religion becomes more popular, then perhaps it too will become a fad and the empirical among us can harvest the herd mentality to the benefit of our social survival. There are things we can learn from religion, but the most important is how to subjugate intelligence and create True Believers in mass movements.
P.S. Got the message Wounded Zebra. Stay off the Serengeti.
P.P.S: So God only applies to Catholics? The rest of us can act with impunity? The point is that the Pope believes that God has a plan and executes that plan. If God doesn't want the Pope's brains spattered, God will prevent it, and if he wants them splattered, he will allow it. It's been the religious cop-out for centuries that God works in mysterious ways and that God intervenes in reality. If God can't control assassins, then why call him God? If God is out of the interfering in human affairs game, why do we pray to him? The irony with the Popemobile is that the person who is the chief talker to God, is least accepting of His will. He just another humanoid in a funny hat that doesn't want to his brains blown out.
P.P.P.S: Naivete?
The bloody Pope and the Catholic dogma insist that the creator of the universe is taking an active role in our daily affairs. Every freaking saint had to commit a miracle. People can't do miracles, gawd acts through them to make the blind deaf or the lame speak. They've got two in the saint queue: bloody john paul and mother teresa. They're attributing supernatural acts to them. How does that happen? Because gawd has full admin rights to the universe and made the impossible happen through them. That's the freaking dogma. So, QED, when the pope rides around like anyone else in a bulletproof jeep, he's admitting that the laws of physics will apply to him no matter what and if someone wants to get him out of the child molesting business then gawd is not going to interfere.
