Thought for the day.

• The Atheist Bus Campaign. Please give so that they may grow.

• Blaspheming buses will burn in Hell, say Christians.

Religion is, in my opinion, a plague of stupid upon humanity. But I see no hope of this changing while humans are humans. And it's not like there aren't lots of plagues of stupid about. Religion evolved when humans realised they would die, to counteract this rather depressing thought.

(Thus, evolution created God to do its work.)

Much as the practical answer to "what is Man, that thou art mindful of him?" through history has been "people are those that fight back hard enough to make me take their concerns seriously," so my own primary consideration of the religious is "are they arseholes to live with? can I tolerate their practical behaviour in society?"

I had an interesting discussion with alextiefling (an active, thinking, believing Christian) on the way back from BiCon about this. Destructive cults versus those religions that have been around long enough not to kill off their followers. e.g. Mormonism 1850 versus Mormonism 2008. The former were dangerous nutters on a par with Scientology, the latter are a bit weird and very conservative but mostly pleasant and livable normal folk.

(My girlfriend is a baptised Christian and a member of the local CoE. We're likely to be sending Freda to the Church primary school.)

Think of cults as ebola, active CoE membership as herpes. Now imagine a world with endemic ebola, but those in the middle of a herpes flareup are basically immune.

(Other memetic afflictions, such as communism, can also provide immunity to the ebola.)

p.s.: life is not inherently meaningful, and you are going to die and disappear entirely. Jussst dussst.

(Does the soul of someone with Alzheimer's stay senile for eternity? Why/why not?)