I can easily spot the difference between the religious fanatic/zealot and those who choose the live their lives guided by reasonable religious principles and interpretations.
Extreme / fanatical religious examples to me are suicide bombers, the violent orange marchers, the sinn fein bombers etc.
You cannot compare those extremists to the average family going to church donating to the poor and simply being guided by good religious principles.
Not that it is relevant but I am totally agnostic when it comes to religion.
I am a firm atheist. I was (kind of) brought up as a Christian, in that I was taken to church as a child, and attended Church of England institutions of education.
However, I am totally adamant that religion is a form of people control. Put it this way, IN THE BEGINNING, fear and ignorance were rife. In order to provide explanation for naturally occurring events, mankind created the gods (God of rain, god of fire, etc etc). Out of this, came magicians, sorcerers, clergy all of whom exploited the idea of their own benefit. (This is how ruling classes and exploited classes ended up being formed, but that's another story).
To brand a child with religion, to indoctrinate it with all kinds of flawed beliefs and prejudices, to tar it with (quite often) irreparable damage to logic and intelligence, is, in my opinion, nothing short of a crime. There are some people I've come across who ask me why I criticise religion. In return, I ask them why they brand themselves as religious. They come of with the same wishy washy answers about being good to one's neighbour, helping the poor etc,
all of which can be done by any decent human being, regardless of religion.
Religion causes war, conflict, division, prejudice and hatred. It causes people to retreat into a tiny shell of calculated ignorance. It's such a closed-minded thing to festoon oneself with.
As you've probably guessed, I CANNOT STAND what organised religion has done to the people of this world, and the fact that so many young people, are still being choked with it fills me with total despair. Thankfully, we have very popular key public figures who speak out against it (Professor Brian Cox, Stephen Fry, David Attenborough, etc), but there are still those who advertise themselves as religious (Justin Bieber, Lewis Hamilton, David Cameron etc), so there's still a long, long way to go before people finally see sense.
