Among those for whom the phrase, "You must carefully chose what hill you are willing to die upon," is a totally foreign concept (e.g., having faith/convictions for which one is willing to give one's life to the uttermost), the idea of anyone having such deeply held faith is incomprehensible and even disdainful.

Everyone has some level of faith --- even faith that their own worldview is the correct one, dispite apparent contradictions.  (re: "There are no absolutes!" ....except for that very statement, of course!)

A continuation of the dogs barking at the moon, but it continues in its path, serenely undisturbed by the commotion below.

The observation about the lack of slams against the myriad "third rail" sacred cows of the leftinistas is also spot on.

I still believe that religion, like sex, is personal. You can’t do it remotely. And if you try to do it anonymously, it destroys the experience.

• An anonymous public forum is simply not a good place to conduct spiritual conversation or prayer. These are personal and require trust, but a website open to the public is impersonal, and doesn’t offer trust. The web makes no promises. If you go to those sites to share your faith with others, you’re assuming that everyone else respects your faith decisions. The web doesn’t offer any security for that. If you want to debate or evaluate whether religion is worthwhile in the first place, you can’t assume that the web will offer mature dialogue. The web simply makes no promises.

• Fools try to “rise above” respected institutions by putting them down. Or, they hope to show that they’re “beyond” the wisdom that institutions teach. It’s adolescent and juvenile, but it’s cheap, and requires no hard work or personal sacrifice. When I read these attacks on institutions like the church, it reminds me that God filled the world with human beings, with all our faults and sins.

One thing to remember is that not all atheists are the same, anymore than all people belonging to one religion are the same.  I've done some basic research into atheist societies from the past, and in my opinion all you see is lip service from the leaders about how smart they are, and how much they want to control the population and make sure the teachings of Christ or other religions are controlled.  Atheist Enver Hoxha was in charge of Albania, and attacked religion.  Albania was more isolated than East Germany was, and nothing productive in terms of science or innnovative thinkers came out of his reign as leader.  In fact after his death, the leaders of Albania passed a resolution condeming Hoxha for his crimes against his own citizens.  Ceausescu from Romania was also a Stalinist like Hoxha, and attacked religion and used lip service to talk about how smart and brilliant he thought he was.  Nothing productive in terms of science or innovative thought came out of athiest Romania, and the poeple of Romania executed him and his wife due to his incompetence.  Atheists Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker and Egon Krenz ran East Germany, and they also used a lot of lip service to talk about how smart they were and attacked religion, and tried to substitute the State for the Church.  Their society was controlled by the Stasi the secret police who kept constant tabs on the population.  Nothing productive in the arts, science or innovative thinking came out of the atheist East Germany.

Leon Trotsky for some reason gets heaps of praise from college professors, but I have no idea what competent things he accomplished.  He was involved with the Red Terror, in which Lenin and Trotsky used the Cheka which was their secret police organziation, to torture, kill or deport anyone during the Russian Revolution.  This was worse than the Inquisition.  Then incompetenet Trotsky and Lenin had to rely on the American Relief Agency to come to Russia to feed the countless millions starving, because Lenin and Trotsky were too incompetent to feed and take care of their people.  The American Relief Agency was from Capitalist USA, and Trotsky and Lenin were against Capitalism.  Trotsky also attacked the Russian Orthodox Church, because he thought they had a lot of wealth.  Priests were persecuted and killed, and after all of that there wasn't as much wealth as he had thought.  Then Trotksy and Lenin attacked the kulaks which were considered to be wealthy peasants.  Who knows how many kulaks died, but some estimates I have seen are over 2 million.  Here is a quote from Lenin from the book "The Sword and the Shield" by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin page 486.

"Every religous idea, every idea of God, every flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness,...vileness of the most dangerous kind, "contagion"of the most abominable kind.  Millions of filthy deeds, acts of violence and phsical contagions are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God decked out in the smartest "ideological" costumes."

 Then from the same book page xxxi.

"The second outstanding case if that of Cardinal Karol Woutyla, Archbishop of Krakow, whom the KGB seems to have identified int he early 1970s as its most dangerous opponent in the Soviet bloc.  Wojtyla, however, was protected by his moral authority and eminence.  The KGB, like the Polish SB, shrank from the immense public outcry which his arrest would provoke.  Seen in hindsight, Woytyla's election in 1978 as Pope John Paul II marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Bloc.  Though the Polish problem was, with difficulty, contained for the next decade, it could not be resolved."

"The Chancellor-the late chancellor-was only part correct.  He was obsolete.  But so was the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.  A case to be filed under "M" for Mankind in the Twilight Zone"  Rod Serling