I LOVE IT! SO TRUE.
"Okay. I have read the bible, several times and cover-to-cover. I needed that - but as protection from any claim to reason and logic from the believers, not as a way to structure my unbelief and certainly not as some sort of moral guidepost. The world should be grateful for that, as I consequently oppose stoning disobedient children, unfaithful wives, gays and other alleged miscreants.Nor am I willing - although the idea has a certain charm - to slaughter all my political opponents, their wives, their male children and all infants below the age of 2, so I can enslave their virgin daughters, as the OT frequently commands.The believers have no shame; they are relentless in their insistence that the occasional kindness allowed by their vengeful, psychotic god is moral instruction for the ages, that their contradictory, irrational, baseless, authoritarian hodgepodge of fear-enforced "guidelines" provide for a better society overall; that the occasional gems of wisdom - stolen from previous cultures - in their book prove divine wisdom and their own righteousness.Perhaps unbelievers should emulate the christians - slaughtering all who disagree and forcing all intellectual discourse into an apologia for skepticism. Perhaps we should burn believers at the stake and torture promiscuously, following the lessons learned from the believers. Perhaps I should line my clothes with lead and try to swim.That makes at least as much sense as following the path into delusion and unreason as a prelude into sanity and reason.This is a poisoned well; it is proved to lead to the destruction of reason, science and any semblance of actual ethical behavior. It is necessary to study the dominant religion of whatever society one is a part of - to protect oneself from the fanatic zeal of true believers. Where secular government exists and it is a bit safer, knowledge of the dominant "holy book" is also useful - simply to counter the absurdity habitually passed off by believers as reason.Believers need us, not the other way around - if they wish to discover rationality, reason, and a real foundation for ethical behavior."