[JamesJones]

Before I make some comments you should know what my beliefs are.

I am a Christian. I have studied several religions ( I hope to study others in the future) and in my opinion Christianity is the one that has the most credible foundation in truth. I believe the early history and scriptures of Christianity make it extremely unlikely that it is a fabrication and therefore its claims about the nature of God and man are true. Was I raised in Christianity? Yes. Is it possible I have not given other religions (including atheism) a fair examination? Yes, it is possible, but I am trying to fair and honest in consideration of other religions. The bottom line is, I want the truth. Can I ever know for sure what the truth is about religion? Perhaps after I am deceased, perhaps not, in the mean time I'm going to keep trying.

Some comments:

Shrey, have people done terrible things in the name of religion? Yes, but you need to keep things in perspective. If you just want to compare the numbers, it wouldn't surprise me if you found that atheist dictators in the 20th century have killed more people (millions) that all the "Christian" persecutions in the last 2000 years. If men professing religion are dangerous, men who answer to no God are far more dangerous. There are many reasons people harm others, religious belief is only one of many. Some people have killed others for food, does that mean we all stop eating?

Dan, glad to hear you don't lump all muslims together. I hope you don't lump all fundamentalists (of any religion) together as well. A fundamentalism is a person who believes that the core tennants and original teachings of religion should be strictly adhered to. Unfortunately we've come to use the word to mean people that hate everybody else and advocate violence. The fact is, if more Christians had been fundamentalists and adhered to the original teachings of their religion, there would have been no inquisition or crusades because conversion by the sword or killing people with other beliefs is not part of the original teachings or early history of Christianity.

As an aside, the inquisition was not a conflict between Catholics and Jews, it was largely a conflict between different groups within the Catholic church.

Sorry to hear you hate being a patriot, that's kind of sad actually. There are very few other countries where we could feel comfortable having this conversation.

James Jones
Engineer/Coach
Team 180 SPAM