Boils the Blood

[Myself]

Christianity is the greatest show of idiocy in the world. It is another control system to subdue adventurous people and make them not be afraid of death and to work harder. Nothing else.

People that follow it are pawns of the system that created the bible. Hence they are all kind and courageous and think there is some reward when they die. I dont know any animals that attend church out of their own frewill and therefore it isnt true since if man knows of god thn why doesnt a dog?

[Swordsman3003]

You obviously have not read the bible. /sarcasm

That, my friend, is the least of the issues. I think that would be solved by saying that animals are no different than rocks or trees, since this is how man is told to treat them as.

[Major Maxillary]

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/0 ... tml#002764

The guy didn't even have to open his mouth to make me see him as a total idiot. and my origional assumption of him was confirmed when he did speak.

I like how he overly animates his lips when he talks. and how he tells the guy not to be arrogant.


Jesus is totally going to kick his ass.



There is no one "root of all evil," but there are several that collectively responsable for all evil. and these are;
Greed(the love of wealth over all else)
Intolerance
Envy
Arrogance


This douche practices Ignorance and Arrogance in this.

I think that about covers it.


On to the whole "religion=evil" thing.

religion isn't evil, the people who practice it are the ones that do evil things. I remember hearing about Thomas Jefferson taking a bible, cutting out all the stuff about God and Jesus, and then saying something like "This is something I can agree with."

all religions are based on a few common virtues. and these virtues have since been hidden, obscured, or outright forgotten by the practitioners of many religions.

there are quite a few religions that aren't insane. like Buddhism.

another would be Unitarian Universalism.


don't say that all religion is evil, because you'll be demonstrating not only ignorance, but intolerance, too.


now, saying that certain sects are evil, that's okay, so long as those sects are, indeed evil. like polygamist Mormons, extremist Muslims, this guy's group, and whoever agrees with those "love in action" camps.


I had something else to say, but i forgot what it was after staring at that shiny sign outside my window for five minutes.

[Ghastly]

All this depends, of course, on how we define "god". If god is simply the most supreme being in the universe then god exists. Someone out there has got to be the most supreme.

Now, since we have no hard evidence to prove the existance of sentient life outside this planet we have to assume, until proven otherwise, that this supreme being lives here on earth. Once we do that it should be clear to everyone that god exists because I am the supreme being on this planet. Therefore I am god. Quod erat demonstrandum baby!

Now, I demand nubile young women in frilly french maid uniforms to appease me or, by golly, there will be a rightious smiting going on. A rightious smiting!

[Nithos]

wait, the good kind of smiting (a la the french maids), or the bad kind (such as the battle of wits Georgie W. lost to a pretzle)?

[Major Maxillary]

you can't have a battle of wits with a pretzel. you just choke on it.

how many times have you almost drowned when some soda went down the wrong tube?

[Schol-R-LEA;2]

"But as the animals look from Napoleon to Pilkington, from man to pig and from pig back to man, they find that they are unable to tell the difference."

The only difference I see between them is that Dawkins might be willing to change his mind in the face of overwhelming evidence. Might. Depends on just how sincere his devotion to the scientific method rally is.

(Of course, in this case such evidence is impossible, at least in scientific terms, because of the fundamental unfalsifiability of the claims. But most people - including most scientists - don't get that part, any more than someone like Dawkins understands that science - for precisely the same reasons which make it useful - by definition cannot be a complete philosophy of existence; this latter is perhaps part of why Dawkins has been guilty of scientism (the use of the trappings of science to bolster non-scientific ideas) on many occasions in the past.)

[Tellner]

lots of gibberish

The problem that I and many other have is not what religious people say, but what they do. They are currently trying to change the standards of science throught political means, which not only insults and undermines scientists (their goal), it will wreak havoc on our already strained U.S. education.

Dawkins is ridiculing the people who are insisting to us that our behaviors need to change, based on their fantasies.

The fundies don't speak for all religious people any more than George Bush speaks for you. 'Nuff said?

[Indigo Violent]

Of course, in this case such evidence is impossible, at least in scientific terms, because of the fundamental unfalsifiability of the claims. But most people - including most scientists - don't get that part, any more than someone like Dawkins understands that science - for precisely the same reasons which make it useful - by definition cannot be a complete philosophy of existence;

Oh, nonsense. Why should I base my beliefs on anything other than reasonable demonstration?

[Tellner]

Christianity is the greatest show of idiocy in the world. It is another control system to subdue adventurous people and make them not be afraid of death and to work harder. Nothing else.

It certainly can be used that way. So can any other human institution. I'd probably be the last person in the world to defend the Church as an entity. My ancestors got pushed all over Europe by it. And it's the reason I learned how to fight as a kid. Unwillingly, reluctantl, but viciously. On the other hand, I know plenty of good, spiritually advanced, intelligent, hard-headed committed Christians. Their religion has taken them a lot farther than most of us can imagine. So I'm not going to be too fast to condemn them or what got them there.

Not fearing death? Well, that's not a bad thing. We will all die, and nobody really knows if there is anything that remains once you drop off the twig. Someone once asked Nasruddin what happened after you die. He said "I don't know." "But you're a Sufi master! You should know." "Yes, but I'm not yet a dead one." Being afraid of it won't prevent it and can make you miserable and cowardly. How you train yourself to courage is a very individual thing. What works for you might not work for me and vice versa.

For an idea of what Christianity might have been like before it was trampled by people like Paul and Theodosius take a look at the Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdala. Suppressed by the Church. Fragmentary. Nearly lost. But very interesting.

People that follow it are pawns of the system that created the bible. Hence they are all kind and courageous and think there is some reward when they die. I dont know any animals that attend church out of their own frewill and therefore it isnt true since if man knows of god thn why doesnt a dog?

I really can't understand a word you're saying here.

[Gengar003]

Of course, in this case such evidence is impossible, at least in scientific terms, because of the fundamental unfalsifiability of the claims. But most people - including most scientists - don't get that part, any more than someone like Dawkins understands that science - for precisely the same reasons which make it useful - by definition cannot be a complete philosophy of existence;

Oh, nonsense. Why should I base my beliefs on anything other than reasonable demonstration?

You shouldn't, if you don't believe that's a wise thing to do.

Just as you believe it "nonsense" to base beliefs on anything other than reasonable demonstration, others believe it not nonsense.

People that follow it are pawns of the system that created the bible. Hence they are all kind and courageous and think there is some reward when they die. I dont know any animals that attend church out of their own frewill and therefore it isnt true since if man knows of god thn why doesnt a dog?

I really can't understand a word you're saying here.

People that follow it are pawns of the system that created the bible. Hence they are all kind and courageous and think there is some reward when they die.

As someone once said "The bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." He's saying that the bible was written by "the man" to appeal to the poor (which, at the time, was probably a significant majority) in order to placate them and prevent an overthrow of the government by promising the poor that their suffering in this short, mortal life would be rewarded in the next, eternal life, if they were good,, i.e, didn't overthrow their rulers but in fact were cheefully subservient.

I dont know any animals that attend church out of their own frewill and therefore it isnt true since if man knows of god thn why doesnt a dog?

God didn't make dogs sentient, duh.

[Schol-R-LEA;2]

Of course, in this case such evidence is impossible, at least in scientific terms, because of the fundamental unfalsifiability of the claims. But most people - including most scientists - don't get that part, any more than someone like Dawkins understands that science - for precisely the same reasons which make it useful - by definition cannot be a complete philosophy of existence;

Oh, nonsense. Why should I base my beliefs on anything other than reasonable demonstration?

You've missed the point, and in doing so, misunderstood the scientific method. The strength of the scientific method is in part from the fact that it intentionally limits itself to a very specific set of phenomena: those which are mechanically reproducible (or which at least can be independently measured by separate, skeptical observers). It intentionally treats anything that is outside of this arena as 'null data', i.e., unanalyzable.

This is a point which is often misunderstood. A scientist, if they really understand their field, would never claim that a given unique event "didn't happen", because obviously someone did observe it, whether accurately or not. They might apply their understanding of known phenomena (physical or psychological) to explain the perceived event, but until the same phenomenon has been independently observed by multiple, skeptical observers, then as far a science is concerned it is a blind spot. Such null data events occur all the time, as a part of everyday life; in most cases, they can be modelled by perfectly explicable known phenomena, and it is perfectly sensible to do so from a pragmatic viewpoint, but doing so is, technically speaking, speculation beyond the existing data and hence unscientific.

(But also remember the words of Malaclypse the Younger: "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look." Which is to say, any theory, scientific or otherwise, says as much about the creator of the model as it does about the phenomenon being modelled.)

Futhermore, there are many aspects of human life and behavior which science is entirely silent upon; for example, one of the key social lessons of the theory of natural selection (when it hasn't been perverted into 'Social Darwinism') is that it is not reasonable to draw a moral or ethical 'lessons' based on the natural behaviors of other animals (as many theologians had tried to in the past), because those behaviors are not predicated on any purpose other than continuation of the genetic heritage, and hence cannot be considered to contain any 'message' from a putative higher being.

Similarly, while a scientific-rational approach can (in principle) be used to analyze and understand the non-rational parts of the human psyche (proof that such aspects exist is left as an exercise for the reader - one can take "Buridan's Ass" as a starting point and follow into the subjects of instinct, the physical basis of consciousness, etc.), actually working with those aspects of the mind requires one to take a non-rational mindset and engage in irrational, but symbolically triggering, behaviors. As Eric S. Raymond said in "Dancing with the Gods": "[A]s long as you stick with the sterile denotative language of psychology, and the logical mode of the waking mind, you won't be able to [enter the states of consciousness he is describing] --- because you can't reach and program the unconscious mind that way. It takes music, symbolism, sex, hypnosis, wine and strange drugs, firelight and chanting, ritual and magic. Super-stimuli that reach past the conscious mind and neocortex, in and back to the primate and mammal and reptile brains curled up inside.".

So, in other words, the reason I've stated that 'science... cannot be a complete philosophy of existence' is because otherwise, it wouldn't be science as we know it, but scientism (in both the sense mentioned earlier, and in the related sense of 'treating scientific method or a given scientific model as moral or spiritual doctrine'). Not that doing so is wrong in any moral sense, it's just not scientific.

And now for something completely fnord: bANG @ gONg! FIVE TONES OF WHACKS!

[Swordsman3003]

Think a minute about 'belief'. I would say that if you 'believe' something, that means you think it is true, despite a complete lack of evidence, or even evidence against it.

If evidence started coming in supporting your 'belief', then it is no longer a belief and is entering the realm of fact.

If someone actually believes something, then for that person the thing in which they believe actually exists in their reality.

Heh, next time I'm in church and the pastor or whoever says something about ID needing to be taught in schools, I'm going to stand up and demand to know why he doesn't teach evolution in church.

[Honor]

Sorry Honor, but you're incorrect or at least incomplete. Etc, etc, etc.

Um, no. As I said, both you, your religious advisors, and even myself might like your definition better... But that doesn't make you Oxford or Merriam-Webster. As much fun as you're having lecturing me about the nature of non-christian religions, and assuming - quite incorrectly - that I'm wholly unfamiliar with them, I'm just talking dictionary definitions.

Religion - the word - means, and I quote, "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. > a particular system of faith and worship." (emphasis added). There is a secondary, slang definition that ironically comes closer to what you're saying... "a pursuit or interest followed with devotion." But it's fairly clear that the intention of this sencondary heading is to define the use of the word religion to describe sports fans or stamp collectors... Not the new-age ponderings of the neo-enlightened.

Your non-standard definition of "theology" hits the same wall. Theology is simply the study of the nature of god and religion... No matter what else others may have done while they wore a "theology" tee-shirt.

Down at the bottom, and it shows pretty clearly, you still believe that religion is whatever form of Pauline Christianity you rejected -

I beg your pardon?!? Before I completely go off a rail at... Would you care to clarify this statement? At the bottom of which entry? And the definition of the word "religion" has merry fuck all to do with my "beliefs"... Or yours.

[Honor]

...any more than someone like Dawkins understands that science - for precisely the same reasons which make it useful - by definition cannot be a complete philosophy of existence...

Only if you demand the inclusion of imaginary ingredients in the recipe of that existence.

...scientism (the use of the trappings of science to bolster non-scientific ideas)

Not exactly the proper definition of scientism... But not horribly far off. Scientism, in it's more derogatory light, refers to a kind of over specialization, or excessive faith in the methods of natural science... To try to use them to answer questions in other fields of human endeavor... Which in no way implies that those fields are beyond the reach of other sciences.

Simply put... There is nothing in reality that cannot answer to intelligent inquiry using one or more scientific approach. This is not a theory, nor a belief without evidence. It is fact, cased firmly in the reality of the broad and flexible nature of science. If it can exist, then a science can be developed to study and explain it. Period.

Science doesn't insist or even imply that something didn't happen just because nobody observed it. Science doesn't deny the existence of observed phenomena because it's explanation is not yet known. These kinds of implication are standard fare for theists and mysticists trying to show that science can't explain everything.

They fit in quite well with the old line that science is, itself, a religion... That it initially took just as much faith to believe in science as it does to believe in god.

Problem is, it's all crap. It all folds back into the same old need that some people have for mysticism in their view of the universe. It takes no faith whatsoever to "believe" in something that's as plain as the summer sun, and not accepting something that's in every way fantastic and has no evidence of any kind to support it is wholly different from denying out of hand something that is plausible but unobserved.

[Ranx]

First: Schol-R-LEA;2, I want to have your clone-babies.

Second: Although this makes me the sort of jerk who links articles instead of making points, this is amusing and topical enough to be forgiven. http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/horror.html

[LeftTentacleGreen]

This is a point which is often misunderstood. A scientist, if they really understand their field, would never claim that a given unique event "didn't happen", because obviously someone did observe it, whether accurately or not.

That's such incredible bullshit! Someone with no evidence of an occurance and can not repeat the occurance, claims that it did happen and for some reason expects scientific respect for it is NOT a scientific mind. The claim is a lie, not an observation. No real scientist would waste time giving it or the individual credit.

[Honor]

People, people. Can't we all just get along, and focus on beating up the agnostics? Pantywaisted fence sitters that they are.

Oh yeah... I forgot to call "bullshit!" on this one. Probably because I assume it's said in jest. Just the same...

Agnostics are on no fence. As sure as the theists are that there is a god who pores over their ever move, and the atheists are that there is none, the agnostic is sure that nothing can be known of the nature of god... Agnostics are deists, after a fashion.

You've missed the point, and in doing so, misunderstood the scientific method. The strength of the scientific method is in part from the fact that it intentionally limits itself to a very specific set of phenomena: those which are mechanically reproducible (or which at least can be independently measured by separate, skeptical observers). It intentionally treats anything that is outside of this arena as 'null data', i.e., unanalyzable.

May as well finish calling "bullshit!" on this while I'm at it.

Though you're fairly close to right as far as you carry it, you're limiting the scope of your conversation - and thus, apparantly, attempting to limit the meaning of the word "science" to natural science and the so-called "scientific method".

What Isaak Newton and others of his time developed as "the scientific method" applies to the pursuits of physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences ("natural science" coming from the previous terminology which gave us the "naturalist" and referring to opposition to mysticism, rather than an implication that all other sciences are "unnatural").

Newton was not a sociologist, a psychologist, or an economist, for example... Nor would he likely have asserted that exactly the same procedure be applied to the solution of every question in ever sort of science.

While we're on the subject, when you say "It intentionally treats anything that is outside of this arena as 'null data', i.e., unanalyzable." this is entirely misleading... As is the entire paragraph. (intentionally, I presume, because I know you're very intelligent.)

Damn construction workers have to kill the power. I'll be back later.

[ManaUser]

People, people. Can't we all just get along, and focus on beating up the agnostics? Pantywaisted fence sitters that they are.

Oh yeah... I forgot to call "bullshit!" on this one. Probably because I assume it's said in jest. Just the same...

Agnostics are on no fence. As sure as the theists are that there is a god who pores over their ever move, and the atheists are that there is none, the agnostic is sure that nothing can be known of the nature of god... Agnostics are deists, after a fashion.

So what is someone who doesn't know whether there is a god AND doesn't know if anything can be known about and any god there may or may not be?

What Isaak Newton and others of his time developed as "the scientific method" applies to the pursuits of physics, chemistry, and other natural sciences ("natural science" coming from the previous terminology which gave us the "naturist" and referring to opposition to mysticism, rather than an implication that all other sciences are "unnatural").

Don't you mean naturalist? My dictionary says naturist means something quite different.

[Tellner]

Yes, Honor, let's take a look.

The single greatest moment in any of the Star Trek franchises, and by extension, one of the greatest moments in television history,.

First off, Star Trek as an authority? Girl, please. It's not even good science fiction, let alone good science, much less decent philosophy. And the aliens all have big heads. Second, television history? Sorry, there are better drugs than the Glass Teat.

There are now, and I expect always will be, people who simply are not... I hesitate to use terms like 'strong', 'brave', or 'intelligent', because there are people of faith who are plenty of all three... But whatever quality it is that allows a person to stand, cold and alone, on the stark rock of truth and brazenly stare down the universe on equal terms is simply lacking in some people. Those are some of the people who always will need some system of faith.

Here's where you take a sharp turn away from the facts.

First, you aren't standing "on the rock of truth". You're as much a collection of coping mechanisms, cultural conditioning, and biological imperatives as the rest of us. Perhaps a little better at reasoning or at least rationalizing, but ultimately not that much different. You choose different coping mechanisms than others, but you still do. You also can't stare at the universe on equal terms. Nobody can. It doesn't stare back, and you can no more stare it down than a climber conquers a mountain by scrambling up to the top.

That's something every mature person, religious or not, deals with at some point.

There is also that quality of humans that is held over from our pack-like ancestry... In the vast majority of us, it's deeply discomforting to be alone. In a lovely anagramatic twist of fate, modern man has gods partially for the same reasons that they have dogs.

People - even very smart ones - are not monadic brains, sitting in splendid isolation from the gross flesh (another Christian dualistic idea you seem not to have shed). We are inseperable from our bodies and our "pack-like" past. It colors every single thing we do and the very parameters within which we can think. We could not get rid of them without ceasing to be human. Whether that's a good idea is another discussion. Until we come up with a new kind of brain and body we're stuck with finding ways of satisfying those imperatives.

And who says this sort of thing is in the past? It's part of our present. Nations? Corporations? Computerized bulletin boards? They all scream "belong". If you are going to damn every spiritual technology for that reason you will also have to reject every collective endeavor on the same grounds.

(snip religion as social club, religion as hobby, religion as a way of controlling people)

Researchers from Allport in the 1950s on have dealt with intrinsic versus extrinsic religion. There's nothing new here. I'm talking about intrinsic religion.

There are some who were born weak, some made weak by upbringing, and some weakened by some trauma... But whatever the cause, they are too weak to make it alone.

There are those who are religious due to indoctrination. They were raised with this bullshit from the earliest age, with varying degrees of intellectual, emotional, and physical violence, and it "took" so well that no realistic amount of education alone is going to break the strangle-hold of the violent fictional view they have of reality.

So anyone who believes differently than you do is abusive, violent, weak and stupid. If that isn't reaction and projection I don't know what is. It's also, not to put too fine a point on it, not true.

One thing that's been pretty clear from all the research since it became possible to do it without getting ridden out of town on a rail. is that intrinsic religion (religion as an organizing principle of one's life) does make a person less prejudced and less prone to worry, guilt, anxiety and depression. Extrinsic religion (religion as a means to some external usually social end) has the opposite effect. The New Scientist recently reported some very interesting and well-supported research on practicing Buddhists. The ones who meditated regularly showed marked decrease in anxiety, fear and anger, less activation of the amygdala and decreased thinning of the cerebral cortex with age.

In other words religious practice, independent of doctrine, seems to be built into the deep structure of our brains. And it has measurable positive effects on practitioners on average. Some people may benefit from this. Others may not. You don't have to turn off the higher faculties like reason or adopt a theology that is at odds with reality (or at least your best model of reality).

There may be other ways of doing this. If you can find them, good for you. We need more Ouspenskys or even Crowleys "We place no reliance in Virgin or pigeon. Our method is Science. Our aim is Religion." Cultural norms have changed in the past couple thousand years. The stories we tell ourselves about why we are coolest thing the universe has produced have changed. Then it was because we were a special creation by Prometheus or lived in the Middle Kingdom. Now it's because we are the reasoning animal with the biggest brain.

The methods and their affects haven't changed. The particular things we believe have.

The eastern and/or more metaphysical religions are just a better mousetrap... There is no shortage of people who are too smart for christianity, islam, or even judaism, but still need the drug,
...

as do a great many of our modern rush on what we might call "enlightened white boy religions"... bhuddism, yoga, hinduism, moral veganism, sihkism, sockism, FSMism, whatever.

I love it. Anyone who doesn't share your proclivities is, once again, and in defiance of any evidence to the contrary, stupid. It doesn't matter what they do or believe. If they aren't just like Honor they're all weak-willed, foolish and gullible. It doesn't matter if the principles and practices they use to organize their lives are theistic, atheistic, moral or anything else. If they have them, believe in them and practice them they are bad.

What's even better is that you dismiss them all based on the ethnicity and gender of the participants. "white boy" religions indeed. Leave aside the fact that you know it's not true. At least, the last time I heard at least as many women as men practiced yoga, and India isn't part of Europe or North America. Thais, Chinese, Japanese and Cambodians aren't precisely white guys. Never mind that. The bigotry is what's important. Truth and your conenction to it depend on the color of your skin and the state of your 23rd chromosome pair. Four legs good. Two legs bad.

It all goes back to the core causes listed above... But the "new" (to us) models don't carry the same drawbacks as the old. They're kinder, smarter, more sustainable. This market pressure is felt in the local brands as well... notice how much friendlier and loving jesus got in the sixties and seventies, and by contrast, how much more pissed off he is just now.

So the things people believe change over time to reflect their cultural conditioning and experience. This is not exactly news. But you believe, somehow, that you are immune from the same thing, that you stand "on the rock of truth" and understand it all better than anyone else, possibly by virtue of your estrogen if that "girls got their first" bit was meant as anything except a throwaway line. I won't use religious terminology here, since it's jargon that you are uncomfortable with. "In the whole world there is no group quite as cool as my group. In my group there is nobody quite as cool as me." It seems to be your take home message here. Results don't matter. Evidence gathered by observation doesn't matter. The simple heuristic of "It works, so I'll do it until I find something that works better" doesn't matter.

What matters is that we all look at the world and order our lives in the same way that you do.

What, pray tell, is the difference between that and the fundies?

The mere fact that now there have been millions of millions of people preaching, writing, meditating, singing, dancing, proselytizing, praying, and building monuments to the teapot for generations now doesn't make it one. iota. more. valid. No matter how much you have emotionally invested in your teapot, it's still a made up thing with not logically conceivable basis in reality.

Bingo. Anything that doesn't posit that teapot isn't "really" religion because it doesn't fit your definition of what religion is.

Religious faith is an "evil" on the same order of magnitude as morphine... Sometimes, some people genuinely need it, and used properly, it can be of great benefit to them, and by extension, to society as a whole. Misused, it becomes dangerous and deadly, and imperils society as a whole. Because some people genuinely need it, it would be cruel to take it away from them entirely... But there's -got- to be some way to control it... Keep it in check.

This is supposed to be news? Fanatics and people who just plain like to grind other people under their feet are as bad as they are common. Before you say it, that belief is a combination of indoctrination and biological predisposition. It makes it no less true.

Let's examine your metaphor a little more deeply. Even though you qualify it by saying "may be useful" you come to the subject already having assumed your conclusions. An inanimate object has intrinsic moral qualities. In this case morphine is evil. Likewise, the religious impulse in any of its forms is evil. What can you say to those of us who do not believe that objects or biochemcial processes have supernatural qualities? Or is it just a matter of shooting the arrows and drawing circles around them?

If, for instance, your religious faith tells you it's ok to hurt other people for religious reasons alone (not self defense, not to defend your property or family, in other words, but because god said so)... Ever. Under any circumstances. Then your "religion" is outside what our protection of religious freedom safeguards... People like that, harsh as it sounds, should be put to sleep. There's no other way that works out as well. This is long enough as it is, so I won't go into the hows and whys just now... But people who believe their god gives them the right or responsibility to judge, attack, harm, or enslave others should be killed for the good of human society. Plain and simple.

Ah, so it is wrong to kill or enslave. Cool. We're on the same page here. I trust you will be honest enough to admit that your belief (like mine) is based on biological imperatives, early childhood indoctrination, culture, and the religious underpinnings of the society you grew up in.

But it's required by the First United Church of Honorism to kill anyone who who judges based on religious convictions other than Fundamentalist Honorism. There we have to part company. Until you hurt someone you have freedom. Once you make freedom of conscience and the fundamental human faculty of judgement capital offenses you are just another Wahabi or Pat Robertson.

Benjamin Franklin said that every revolution in time dons the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. The robes of the Grand Inquisitor seem to fit your final argument as if they were cut by the finest tailor.