"In retrospect, the thing you will remember is not
the pageant they put on but the inner experience they helped you find."

Do I bore you? Sorry.

Religion can help a newcomer or lost person find the "higher story" in their own
mansion of the soul and exchange notes about occupying our respective mansions of the soul.
If they do this, it is a great service.

Organized religions have NOTHING worthwhile
to say about science. Their domain is entirely
personal... and participation must be freely chosen by each person without coercion. How
inconvenient...but how can free will be free
and coerced at the same time? Coercion is the
domain of the material necessities of the world
and the boundaries of material actions.

IF NOT for FREE CHOICE, a religion is not a service and its domain is not the soul but the material world
-- and thus is competition for the civil constitution!

Generally, religions deny the validity of scientific method and debate itself -- while denying they do any such thing! They should drop that foolish way of doing business in favor of cautious and gradual transition to creative, urgent, gentle, effective honesty. In retrospect, the thing you remember is not
the pageant they put on but the inner experience they helped you find.

• & tho' religion helped create Civility, illogic has infested it - theloopypath - November 27, 2002 - 19:44 UTC