I think you misunderstand my use of logic in this argument. I'm not arguing that logic should prevent anyone from embracing a religion in the first place. I've made that argument before and it would be obviously falling on deaf ears with anyone of faith. Instead the logic argument is within the particular religion itself when people who rely on some holy text to define their belief system have to pick and choose diametrically opposed passages to construct their moral code.

It's one thing for a thinking individual to say there's too much complexity in the Universe for them to accept random evolution so there must be some intelligent agent of creation. I can buy that line of thinking. I can even accept that there's this natural tendency to want to have this creator be some moral arbitrator of good and evil and provide some control over people's lives and to even extend that influence past their physical presence. I'm not threatened or confused by that portion of religion even though it doesn't fit my way of looking at it all.

What goes beyond human nature and acceptable leaps of logic for me though is this ability members of the major religions seem to have to simply excuse widely contradictory elements of their faith. When your holy text is telling you to both be peaceful and that murder is a sin while boasting passages that seem to encourage holy jihad and war, something should be raising bright red flags in people's minds. To me these rationalizations go beyond simple faith and border on abject gullibility.

I'm not talking just Christianity here Tom. People of the Islamic faith are just as guilty. You obviously see that faith as being worse than your own because of the horrific nature of the violence currently being committed in its name but you and I both know Christianity has just as much potential to be used for evil. You're just lucky enough to be in a country where the economics and ease of living outweigh the factors that move people to the extremes.

My conclusion from all this is that rationalization is highly addictive. Once humans make that leap from science and logic to faith, magic, and justification for irrational choices, it all becomes this drug that has to be administered in higher and higher doses with each new situation. It's too bad Lenin and Marx had a greedy and power hungry side to them because I think their views on religion as an opiate were spot on. Once people stop applying analysis and critical thinking they become inefficient, lazy, and greedy. The trick though is not to impose a ban on religion but instead to relegate it instead to a form of personal fulfillment or even, for the more banal to mere entertainment, instead of it being a guideline for social interaction. Were I a praying man, I'd be asking for that in my lifetime.

Art