Billy wrote:
Doug Freyburger wrote:

Based on your experience with one religion and your having been poisoned
by it.

How do you differentiate being poisoned from awareness of hypocrisy?

Awareness of hypocricy is acknowledging the errors of a specific
religion. Look carefully and any faith will have some problems. To
assume that all suffer from the same problems is to be poisoned. They
do not.

There's a further issue not just with Buddhism not addressing deity.
All or almost all religions tell stories. Do not confuse the fact that
a couple of very popular religions make the mistake of claiming their
stories are literally true with the fact that stories get told. Those
are two separate topics. To most faiths the stories are fiction that
teaches. To a couple of faiths the stories are supposed to be literally
true that also teach.

Is there actually a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? No. It's a
tale about chasing get rich quick schemes, complete with the gold
disappearing after a day. The real gold in the rainbow is the warm
glow in our hearts when we watch a rainbow. Two levels of mythical
meaning in the same tale, both of which are true and neither of which
appear in the tale itself. That's how the tales of other faiths work.
It is in fact a tale from one of the other faiths.

Did Odin really turn into a one eyed snake, drill into a mountain,
secude a maiden, retrieve the mead of inspiration, return it home, and
dribble some onto humanity as he returned? No. It's an adventure tale
for the children, a barrage of sexual innuendo for young couples, a
view of the cycles of life for the elderly.

Did Sampson really lose his strength because his hair was cut? If there
even was a human named Sampson. No. Becoming a kept man might have
had a bit more to do with it. The hair is a symbol for changed social
status not a literal source of strength.

Doesn't really matter as religion is optional in
civilized society.

Then why do my tax dollars (not optional) go to printing, "In God We
Trust" on our currency? Or do you contend that we aren't a civilized
society?

Civilization is a floating point not a binary number. Putting "In God
We Trust" on the coinage about the time of the US Civil War and on the
paper currency about the time of WWI was a departure from the principles
of freedom of religion. Adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance
about the time of the Korean War was also a departure from the
principles of freedom of religion. Freedom of religion must include
freedom from religion.

Both in both cases they can be viewed as a description of the majority
of the population not as harassing atheists. And in both cases it's
more generic than the majority might have liked. The US Constitution
forbids establishing a state religion but it does not forbid noticing
that the majority of the population is religious. I don't like either
situation but I understand how and where the line gets drawn. That I
would draw the line in a different place is less important than that the
line does get drawn - The government can't fund any specific religion
and can't drive out any specific religion, but the government can
acknowledge that religion is popular with the majority.

No civilization is perfect in any of its stances. These two examples of
how freedom of religion and separation of church and state can be bent
without being broken. The bending is the bad part, the departure from
the 1.00 value. The not breaking part is the good part, adding another
dimension. The US in specific and the west in general lead the world in
separation of church and state and religious freeodm. The US screws it
up on certain points. The logo on the money and the words in the Pledge
are among the screw ups.

Rosemary at the store yesterday. It didn't have as much aroma as I
expected.

Long pepper in my eggs this morning. It's not as hot as round
peppercorns. Not sure how to describe the flavor. Somewhere like
Worchestershire Sauce or cloves. As if those two have enough in common
for such a description to make the slightest sense. So now to try long
pepper flavored spice cookies! Gluten free as usual. I figure the
tee shirt will say "Uncle Dag went on a caravan with the Varangian Guard
and all we got was this recipe for spiced cookies flavored with an
exotic southern spice".