Hi, Ex. (May I call you by your first name? ;) )

I have to go to work, so I'll have to be quick.

Non-rational faith is not the same as irrational ideas. Faith goes where there is no foothold for logic, where there is no sensory evidence. It speculates about what came before the Big Bang, and where we go -- if we go -- after we die. That's why they call it metaphysics.

Fanaticism comes in all flavors. Communism is an atheist expression of fanatic behavior.

Last, we are going through a period of enormous change in our intellectual and emotional growth during this period. It's difficult for some people to absorb this, so they revert to the "old ways" for comfort. Rather than calling them crazy, I have found it more helpful to engage people in dialog about their beliefs and to try to help them move forward to the point where they can embrace the ethics of their religious heritage, and understand the emotional resonances of their rituals (art forms that can be very beautiful), without clinging to the irrational throwbacks to ancient scientific theories upon which the early religions were, in fact, based.

I need to go do that for a living now.

Pax vobiscum, from the agnostic former Catholic--
Mary Anne