It is lazy, sloppy, arrogant and inherently wrong to individuality.

And as long as you insist on lecturing us like children, Tom, you’re just going to have to learn to put up with the occasional fart in the back of the class.

(Please insert here the sound of ripping silk).

Please do not instruct me on using these forums as a personal soapbox. The fact that you even typed that without going “wait a minute now…” is depressing.

When countering blatant, even shameless, propaganda, derision is more effective than a pointless debate on an issue of personal preference which cannot be decided by reason anyway. I am not going to allow you to control the conversation you insisted on imposing on everyone else. Any serious attempt to engage intellectually with your graffito would only serve to legitimize it as worthwhile.

Sorry, Tom, but as long as you choose to use this forum as your personal soapbox, I’m perfectly free to throw the occasional rotten tomato.

“…in the past couple of centuries, how much damage have religious leaders done compared to political ones?”

Of course, religious leaders don’t normally victimize the rich, do they? They usually work with them instead while they prey on the poor together.

And Tom, there have been few discussions about religion on this forum where you haven’t felt the need to interrupt and point out that “big government” was worse. In fact, in this post I am responding to, you just did it AGAIN! Twice in one thread! You’re getting too predictable to be effective.

With that in mind, you could probably save yourself a lot of typing, and us a lot of reading, if you just numbered your stock ripostes, in the interest of compactness and brevity. “Statists are worse than messiahs” could simply be ‘Number 21!’ It would have about the same effectiveness, but it would take a lot less effort.

We easily expand that inborn need for protectors to authority figures of any sort, including religious leaders and, more saliently, gods. God becomes a super parent, able to protect us and care for us even when our more corporeal support systems disappear, through death or distance.

I thought the omission of political leaders (of all stripes) was kind of obvious, and when we look at world history it’s kind of an important omission. I’ll grant any reasonable reader would have assumed they fell under “authority figures,” but still.

Seriously, in the past couple of centuries, how much damage have religious leaders done compared to political ones? Granted, this hasn’t always been true, but it is now.

“How many divisions does the Pope have?” – Stalin