Religion: no such thing

[The Barefoot Bum]

I have a couple of rather long posts at my blog, The Barefoot Bum.

No such thing (as religion):

There's no such thing as religion. No such thing (in a religious sense) as Judaism, Christianity or Islam. ... None of these isms are actually about any thing. There is no "objective" way to discuss any of these isms because there is no object to discuss.

Some such thing:

I must admit I'm not precisely correct. ... Religion is something: It's a cultural artifact itself, common to human culture. And in every society with religion, it serves but a single practice: To use dogma to justify the specific arbitrary practices of that culture as truth. ...

Trying to reinterpret these scriptures to justify modern ethics is an exercise in circular logic:

1. We believe that stoning recalcitrant children to death is bad and providing loving discipline to your children is good
2. Therefore, when the Bible says that stoning recalcitrant children to death is good it must mean that providing loving discipline to children is good
3. Therefore providing loving discipline to children is good because the Bible says it's good.

This sort of circular sophistry ought to (and does) offend the reason of anyone, even a religious fundamentalist. If you're going to take the Bible as a dogmatic authority, then when it says that stoning recalcitrant children to death is good in plain, unambiguous language then stoning recalcitrant children to death is good. Contrawise, if you want to say that stoning recalcitrant children to death is bad, you're no longer using the Bible as an authority. ...

We uncompromising atheists (really naturalists) are a lonely minority, beset on all sides. We are beset by nihilists denying truth and attacking any confident, rational belief as "dogmatic". We are beset by the religious, claiming that truth can or must be revealed supernaturally or prophetically. We are beset by the accommodationists, demanding that we keep silent just one day more until this issue or that is resolved in our favor, ignoring that, until dogmatism itself is destroyed root and branch, there will always be one more issue, and another, and another: The world never stops changing.

(I'm a long-winded bastard, so there's much more.)