There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
I'm not a religious person and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion but I do like having some sort of communal gathering and having some sense of peoples.
Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.
Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem.
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god which can be a very unspiritual unreligious concept.
After I left the convent for 15 years I was worn out with religion I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train I'd think how awful.
Most people I know are not hard-core religious people. They are what I would call 'lightly religious.' So I don't buy the notion that we can't laugh about religion in America.
Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people and mention how important it is that compassion is the key that it's the sine-qua-non of religion people look kind of balked and stubborn sometimes as much to say what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?
Religion creates community community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.
It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.