I am 20-something, I suppose my parents are "middle-class" whereas I'm working class, (though that may be a false distinction, it's always been a position of the IWW that if you work for wages, you are in the working class, no matter if you're a ditch-digger or a college professor,) I have read some 19th- (and 20th-, and 21st-) century anarchist documents, but I've never spray-painted anything on any dorm.

I'm an anarchist because the kibbutzim and moshavim made a desert bloom. I'm an anarchist because worker-owned enterprises got the Argentine economy back on its feet after the IMF screwed it up. I'm an anarchist because similar enterprises brought justice, however briefly, to many Spaniards during their civil war. I'm an anarchist because worker-owned enterprises continue to thrive today.

I'm an anarchist because I know that nation-states are artificial and harmful, and organized religions are even worse. I'm an anarchist because John Lennon was right when he wrote "Imagine" and Billy Bragg was right when he wrote new lyrics to "The Internationale."

What's that nonsense about Sierra Leone? Do you know what anarchism is, now?

No, fenella, all religions are not equally intolerant, not by a long shot, but that doesn't make them harmless, let alone worthwhile.

to BadReligion, burning at the stake went out centuries ago. your problem is the inability to make distinctions. You can't admit that one system of belief is more tolerant than another, because that would be politically incorrect, so you say the hell with all of them, which is a dishonest position.

"Jonathan's point makes sense, so long as his definition of Religious includes left-liberals. Leftism is a modern religion. It has all the trappings: sub-rational beliefs, a framework of taboos, a messianic impulse...."

Liberalism is a _political_ belief system, as is conservatism.

Conservatism is a modern religion. It has all the trappings: sub-rational beliefs, a framework of taboos, a messianic impulse.

It makes just as much sense to say that about conservatism as it does liberalism.

Communism on the left and fascism on the right can be seen as religious faiths in many ways.

A very good case can be made that Jesus the Christ was a liberal. After all, He did not mingle with the rich and powerful, in fact He condemned them. By and large, Jesus the Christ preached a philosophy of inclusion and tolerance rather than one of exclusion and intolerance.

Like most atheists today, I was raised a theist. I reached my atheism through a process of examining my beliefs in the cold hard light of rationality and came to the conclusion that they didn't make any sense to me. I then constructed my own belief system from virtual scratch, since I had no authorities around me to help in my deconversion.

If one posits that the universe and humanity is too complex to have come about through any other process than intelligent design, then that presupposes the presence of an intelligent designer. Logically, one would suspect that an intelligent designer would have to be more complex than that which he/she/it designs. That then raises the question of who or what designed the intelligent designer. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that there is an even more complex intelligent designer responsible for the intelligent design of our intelligent designer. This then becomes an infinite cascade of intelligent designers, each more complex and powerful than the last.

Ockham's Razor can be used to cut this Gordian Knot of infinite numbers of ever more complex intelligent designers. The short version of Ockham's Razor is as follows: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." The simplest solution is that we are here and no one designed us or our universe.

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

- Autobiography of Mark Twain

One thing that Muslims and Christians have in common is that they both hate atheists more than they hate each other.

Jonathan's point makes sense, so long as his definition of Religious includes left-liberals. Leftism is a modern religion. It has all the trappings: sub-rational beliefs, a framework of taboos, a messianic impulse....

As to the another poster's comment that he is an anarchist: does he mean Anarchist as in a 20-something kid with nice middle class parents, who has read a couple of 19th century anarchist manifestos and spray-painted something on his college dorm....

... or Anarchist as in doped-up, machette-whacking, back-of-a-Toyota-pick-up with a Kalashnikov, rapist and murderer 17 year-old in Sierrra Leone?

It is the nature of religions to call for tolerance when they are in the minority.

But when a religion becomes a majority the call for tolerance ends and becomes a call for perfection.

The reason for this is, that for a person of faith, the existence of people with an equally strong faith in some other belief system calls into question their faith in their own belief system. When in the majority, a belief system based on faith cannot resist the temptation to obliterate other belief systems in order to help eliminate a source of doubt about its own belief system.

The only reason the USA has not become a Christian theocracy is because we have never been able to agree on just which sect of Christianity should be ascendant.

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

-Mark Twain- "The Lowest Animal"