The Catholic office of the Holy Inquisition attempted to eliminate false beliefs, but that heavy handed approach was inherently unreliable because of the use of torture to find the next victims and reliance on authority instead of reason to determine the unacceptable concepts. A better way to eliminate error is to educate our children and youth in critical thinking. To apply reason and argument, in the classical manner, to arrive at truth, is the only acceptable means for long term peace and stability in the world.

This morning I heard a talk radio personality say that he has nothing against religious beliefs (even though he is not a believer) because so many people find comfort and solace through religion. That same argument could be used to justify the casual use of opiates.

While I have nothing against heroin addicts, and say "live and let live" and "to each his own," I must say that I believe they would better off without their habits. So it is with false comforting beliefs. We cannot tear the beliefs from them as we would take the syringe from the hand of the addict, but perhaps through patient reasoning we can find a way to get through to the god addict.

For after all, once a person has seen the truth and where the human race actually is, where it has been, and where it could be, then we will all have a shared vision of the peace and prosperity that could replace the war and pestilence we suffer today. We can work in concert rather than in opposition. But force cannot be used. Gentle reason is the only answer.

Fight suicide bomber with freedom!

Alter the conditions that created the insecurities and stress which made the suicide bomber a suicide bomber, and he would find another way to fill his time.

and he wouldn't get his 70 virgins in the afterlife.......

Don't get me started about the afterlife virgin shortage.

lol..i actually find it amusing...

Right. I would go through my ration in about 10 days. Then what?

not sure... just have 70 non virgin women for all eternity?

what's wrong with experience?

Who made the rule about 70 virgins? No one told me.

Actually, I think it's 72 (from that other book of mythology). I don't want anyone to be shorted on his virgins.

It is (or was 72 - now 0).
It started at 72, but the Masters of indoctrination knew their brothers would believe what they were told.

Corruption and internal inconsistencies of doctrine contributed largely to the decline of Christianity, sprinkled with a seeming epidemic of priestly pedophilia and too many spiritually immature clods who obsessed over fornication, gluttony, and clownish self-righteousness. Pain and humiliation are not necessarily bad things to inflict on others, particularly if their ignorance offends you. It may be a little sadistic, but such is the nature of Life, and we should not be so timid with life to shrink back like little flowers from the morning frost.

God is a sadist and a poet..