From the "for what it's worth" department, my personal take on the idea of even bothering to debate religion. It's actually, really comical. Not one person here is going to be converted, convinced, swayed, or much more than remoted interested by anything anyone else says. There are the faithful sniping on atheists without really knowing what they are talking about, there are atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, pagans, wiccas, asatru, etc etc etc sniping on the faithful without really knowing what they are talking about.

And the Christmas thing is just too funny. In the city/county area where I live, there are over 250 christian churches (there are 262 listed in the directory on the local newspapers website). Every christmas, they put up a nativity (a few of them, that face more than one major road, put up 2). So, when you count all those churches, the "christian organizations", the YMCA, the Salvation army and what have you, you end up with nearly 300 nativity scenes. But, when the city refuses to allow them to put a nativity on city property, the christians scream "taking christ out of christmas!!" Just how much exposure does this nativity thing need, anyway? Aren't 300+ displays in one county enough?

Brainwashing...that is such a mean word, and not really accurate in these cases in my opinion. Brainwashing would suggest that a person is weak minded enough for everything they know and hold dear to be erased and replaced by something else. A more suitable phrase might be "intensive postnatal indoctrination". As soon as mother and baby are well enough to get out of the house, the baby is taken to the altar of the parents choosing, where the child is dipped, dunked, dribbled, or annointed in some form or fashion, and from just a few days old is the focus of intensive indoctrination. When they are 4 or 5 they are taken to a separate part of the house of worship for "bible study", where they are assigned passages to quote, passages to find, and quizzed repeatedly on all that they learn. They will eventually become adults that have never, ever known anything other than their programming, so they have no means to make comparisons, and have no idea of the depth of their "learnings" influence.

Atheists have started to organize in the last few years, which I also think is hilarious. Organizing and adopting symbols and a doctrine would seem to be becoming the very thing they contest. I looked into it, and said "no thanks". There is no way, ever, no how, that any group or groups of non-believers is ever going to gather enough clout to make any kind of political changes. Most of the atheists I've met had been hiding that fact from at least one other person, and wasn't willing to tell too many people about it.

I'm going to stay home with the kittens, kept them safe and warm and fed, and not even worry about the fact that there are religious wars coming, on a large scale. Humankind is destined by our own decree to destroy ourselves, to war and fight in the name of (insert name of preferred bronze-aged fairytale here).

The one truth of the bible...."the meek shall inheret the earth". But the meek are the wiccas, and pagans, and followers of earth magics, that will have the horrid task of trying to help the world heal, after all the faithful have destroyed each other.

My 2 cents.