Refering to your article "The Pope is Humpty-Dumpty," I would like to put

in a few comments.

1. Whilst many crimes have been committed in the name of religion, it's as

silly to label religion a crime as to label fire-arms evil.

2. "Fighting" against religion or people's believe in God(s) is quite

unnecesary. Religion is like drug and alchohol - it can be used leisurely

to make your mind believe in something that cannot be explained using

conventional logic, thus make you feel better, accept tragedy better, and

get on with your life and pretend that your life actually means something

in the grand scheme of things[1]. There are times where religion and drugs

and alchohol are absolutely necessary. When you suffer insufferable

physiological pain, doctors prescribe morphine so you don't convulse to

death. When you are in extreme emotional pain, you will your mind to

believe in the meta-physical so you don't go completely insane. There is

no need "figthing" against religion, "moderating" it would be just fine.

3. As hard as we human research and study the universe, still many events

happen that we cannot explain. Religion will continue to be the place

holder to hold those things that we cannot understand at present.

Fanaticism will hold out the things that we can already explain/understand

but refuse to believe/accept. So go ahead and "fight" fanaticism and even

the religious will support your cause.

4. Taxing - no need to special-case religious organization beyond the

regular profit/non-profit boundary.

5. Moderate apathy towards religion is probably a more effective tactic

contain it than a head-on attack on religion. Instead of calling people to

arms to fight religion, perhaps you would consider the alternative of

instilling a healthy dose of apathy towards it? (This idea came from

hearing many holy men commenting on the relative difficulty to convert a

person pationately oppose to believing than a person who simply doesn't

care one way or the other. It's the passionately opposing to believe who

is the easier to be made into a believer.)

5. It is hard to not believe in anything in its absolute. I am not even

sure if the human consciousness is capable of such feat at all. At the

bases of all logic systems are axioms, things that we believe to be

absolute self-evident truth. The difference between religion and things

logical is in degree, not in the fundamental. Religion as most people know

it holds many things as axioms, while logic as most people know it hold

only a few things as axioms. So, come-on, even the atheists have got to

believe in something in its absolute, right?

No offense, but I personally consider Atherism a form of religion.

Best regards.