> So long as you ignore everything that has been said, so long as you
> equate religion with its most absurd manifestations, it's going to be
> very hard to talk here.
I guess it depends on where people want to see the discussion head.
I understand the nuances of progressive forms of religion in the United States, but I think a more confrontational approach is needed towards religion. Perhaps it is unfair to progressive religionists to use the same brush against them as against the fundamentalists, but then religion dominates American society in a very harmful and annoying way.
> I have been a dues paying member of a Trotskyist party and believe me
> that before I would go back to that idiotic mumbo jumbo, I _will_ walk
> into a Quaker congregation or check out the Unitarians. This is not a
> reflection on Trotsky but on the demented behavior of such political
> parties in the U.S. I mean you want to talk about absurd ritual and
> misguided beliefs all rendered in the most obsolete formulaic language
> imaginable, you can't really do better than such parties.
You have a point there about political groups, but these groups are typical groupings of people with common interests. They aren't based on a belief system in the supernatural. Trotsky was a real person with real ideas. He didn't die for the sins of the proletariat.
Chuck