Not Your Parents' Religion

Someone in the Atheists-World yahoo group just posted a link to this policy statement of the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education and Literacy.

I really feel for devout and wonderful religious folk, especially elderly people who have lived long, and tough lives and just want their final years to be contented and peaceful. Who doesn't want that? Who could possibly want to deny such a thing to anyone that isn't trying to prevent others from having the same.

It's why I'm glad that the United States has an Establishment Clause to prohibit folks from either forcing a specific religion or no religion at all upon others.

Besides, religion will fade as a natural course of human cultural evolution. Not in our great great great great grandkids' lifetimes. I'm quite sure of that. But, if we stay an extant species for a few dozen more generations, there won't be anything like the Catholic Church left in any part of the technologically modern world of homo sapiens. The Islamic world is still straddling the border. Engineering and mathematics are two aspects of science which prove that religion doesn't HAVE to stifle knowledge. I'm just not sure how its members will take it forward. It may be around for quite a while longer.

As for Buddhism... I heard the Dalai Llama say something similar to the following quote, but with a caveat.

It was on NPR one morning last autumn, from a speach to Buddhists on how to think about science when it conflicts with ancient wisdom. The caveat?

I doesn't matter what science has to say about reincarnation. {-;

'Night all...