[Arnab]

I don't want to speak on behalf of ALL non-religious people. And I am an atheist first, "secularist" second simply because religion still exists in society. So I guess I will speak on behalf of people who think like me.

Again, going back to my analogy of physical handicap, we do not show "physical condescension" or act "fascist" when we do things with our hands in front of a person who has no hands (more so if he "chose" to cut his own hands off voluntarily). The use of the word "condescension" here makes no sense to me or people like me.

"Many a rational, intelligent person (your scientists, academics, etc) have maintained their faith." True. And many more, including probably a big proportion of philosophers who actually think about this stuff, haven't, because it made no rational sense to them. To accuse them of "fascism" or "fundamentalism" is probably wrong.

I could similarly accuse as fascists/fundamentalists those people who seemingly have somehow managed to make "irrational faith and rational thinking" work together and think they are at some superior moral ground for accomplishing that. I could call them the fascist fence-straddlers bent on the fundamental ideology of fence-straddling. But I won't. Because this kinf of labeling makes no sense to me.


Edited on, March 24, 2005, 7:27 PM GMT, by Arnab.