>Well done- you completely ignored my point so you could hammer on your own! ;-)
>
>It's when they want to discuss medicine and proscribe stuff for non-members, when I'm getting deurinated.
>
>Why? You aren't living in medieval Spain but in a country that separates religion from State

Does it? Then why are there such things as military chaplains? Mention of the imaginary friend to whom they trust their money? The "under imaginary friend" phrase in the pledge? And about zero representation of the 15-18% of atheists. Just compare that with the representation of some religions - a religion with a 2-3% of population may be represented by a disproportionate number of representatives - probably at the expense of the religion-free people.

>and believes strongly in free speech for all, not just for people of one pov. Around here you hammer regularly on religion without drawing intolerant responses; why can't that be a two-way street?

Sometimes I do feel like a club president who chides the present fifth for the absence of the absent four fifths. And I did get intolerant responses once or twice upon a time - but then I'm not complaining about lack of tolerance on this forum (apart of a few people who just love to go overboard, but I'm not biting); I'm addressing the regular people about the intolerance out there, in the imaginary real world.

>As for proscribed standards: we know that anarchy only works when the weather is fine so we do have to have "proscribed" standards in any modern society and as long as there is an opportunity to discuss and vote, it all seems to work. It's only when it becomes acceptable to attack/demonize other viewpoints that the trouble starts. Intriguingly it tends to be those who think of themselves as the tolerant "free thinkers" who show the least tolerance towards those who disagree with them.

I wouldn't be holier than thou... it smacks of religion ;).

Kidding aside, I was exactly that, tolerant to a fault, for decades. Found excuses for this or that, these can't be that bad, those can't be that bad... I guess I have become old enough, accumulated sufficient injustice and ill will to be angry and to say that I've had enough. Comes with age (and territory). Even on a lovely spring day, which was almost always able to make me forget all the ails - you wouldn't believe, even in 1991 when my country was bursting at the seams, I felt optimism on such a day - nowadays, it's enough to hear yet another set of repeated lies, snide dirty propagandist tactical maneuver, on a one-way medium that you can't respond to, and can't even google them out - they publish only much later - I somehow am left with just a choice between adrenalin and phlegm. Can't even find it in myself to dismiss them as "just following their orders and spitting rubbish they were paid to produce".

It will be a really cold day in whichever Hades they believe when I get convinced that a religion has done something really good that wasn't actually countered by their self-promotion, expansion or just plain will for power and control.

(update: I see I have mixed the behavior of right wing politics with religion... they're in the same bed, anyway)