Quote Originally Posted by Zalis View Post
1) You're confusing Christians doing things in the name of God with what the actual formation of the faith taught.
2) Science is the observable how, not the existential or philosophical why.
3) I won't backpedal on what I believe, but I also aim to be reasonable.
1) I'm not disagreeing with you that having such an important figure be a criminal is a bad thing. But there's lots of bad figures in religion that get a free pass because of "respect of faith" and such nonsense, and I think it's hypocritical to point fingers at one and not at all.

2) If you can reduce "why" to measurable quantities, then science will tell you "how". "Why" might be defined as lower crime rates, lower conflicts, better wealth distribution, etc. You know, stuff religion tries to fix but doesn't do that well.

3) Problem is that I hear that from reasonable and unreasonable people alike. It's like hearing "but I am innocent", yeah, well, even the worse criminals say that. With religion, though, what people consider unreasonable can end up being stuff that should be up for logical / practical consideration and yet they are not willing to view it from a logical / practical point of view.