Apr 6 2011: whoa there, Keith. Now it's YOU rounding up the people of faith and carting them off into concentration camps. You are (as are most of the people here) falling into what you are deploring: each of you have been harping on the evils of those who don't think like you do, and condemning their beliefs. The problem is not in the beliefs - everyone, especially the athiest, has strong religious beliefs. An evolutionist strongly defends his belief system and strongly condemns any heretic that dare explain past events within a different framework. Instead of suicide bombings, it is often academic murder they commit, but ALL groups share the mental "us" vs "them" issue. Look at the boards here - it's us vs them all over your comments, and if you get your way, no one can have a thought other than yours, or the thought police will be there for retraining or irradication. I do believe in competing ideas, and I think that most people with options will choose the truth. the biggest problems come (socially and academically) when one group tries to dominate the idea landscape and starts talking to the group how all other ways of thinking (e.g. a moral crime to teach religion) are evil and the problem to be eliminated. Free choice, in which all voices are heard and explained well, allows people to find the correct ideas. Truth is never afraid to compete with untruth, but the converse is not at all true. ANYWHERE the mob prevents other voices from being heard, you have this danger, and in our universities today, there are quite a few "sacred cows" that have nothing to do with religion that fit her description to a "T" It's scary that no one here shouted you down, because most everyone on this board is anti-religion, and so secretly agrees that the religious should be eliminated, and so Hitler lives on... as do eugenic movements... and religious wars... et cetera
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A reply on Conversation: Where on the continuum does religion become extremism? Is extremism a cognitive disorder?