Do you believe in God

Also, whether a religion is useful is a very different debate than whether it is true.

 

Oh please.
A religion is not a single person. Roman Catholicism has included billions of different people since its beginning. Some of them chose to use their religion as a weapon; many, many, many more chose to use it for good. Dawkins dismisses all of that feeding the hungry stuff and focuses on the disgraceful episodes. He's intellectually dishonest.
As for the whole fundamentalist argument, on this subject I'd dismiss anyone who claimed to have the definitive answer and attempted to dismiss those who think otherwise. And Dawkins fits that description.

 

Does the word propoganda mean anything?

 

For answers to questions like these, several companies offer books called "dictionaries".

 

Actually, Derrida would tell you that each and every word is, in and of itself, meaningless, since it can only be defined by other words or by breaking down which letters it is comprised of and, therefore, which letters of which it is not comprised.

At that point, though, as Fenian once said, you just want to go lay under a tree and play with your belly button.

 

Good, bad, indifferent... it doesn't matter. Plenty of people do good with and without religion. Pointing out that religion serves as a sticking point for some during acts of evil isn't dishonest, it is stating a fact.

9/11 occurred because of religion. FACT.

Dawkins isn't going to go into the semantics of how the hijackers socio-economic upbringing enabled the person to be blinded by the immorality of murdering so many. He doesn't have to.

Of course evil, in all of its forms, will not disappear if religion does. Dawkins' entire premise is that the excuse of religious difference will.

 

Do I believe there's a Higher Religious Entity? Yes.
But I am not sure there's one Higher Religious Entity. Priests tried to browbeat the idea of one Higher Religious Entity in my 16 years of Catholic schooling. I didn't buy it, though. How do I know that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are the guys? I couldn't get past that line of thinking. What if I die and instead of St. Peter at the Gates, Allah's waiting on me? Or Buddha? Or whoever?

Beyond that, I felt and still feel that the Bible needs to be updated. It was written in 42 A.D. The world has changed in the 1,965 years since. What was applicable when Peter and Paul walked the earth might not make sense now.

Finally, it disgusts me that the Catholic Church has protected pedophile priests. Not only just protect these child-raping-sons-of-bitches, but move them to other parishes. It's not enough that Father McFeelupanalterboy ruined lives in one parish? The Church then callously moves the priest to another parish, turning a blind eye and acquiescing to the priest's/priests' evil.

 

Bend over, the priest said.

 

Windu, each post you make needs to have a disclaimer: "I'm for defending every group except for Christians. And I, unlike the Pastor, does believe that if religion, but especially Christianity, would disappear, evil would too."

 

I does believe?