Quote Originally Posted by CoccoBill
It's healthy to think that killing infidels and dying in battle will guarantee you'll have a pleasant afterlife? It's healthy to know that however much you "sin", all will be forgiven in the end? How will it make you value life and your surroundings more if you think that this is just a tiny part of it, the "good" eternal part is just about to start?
Well I'll certainly admit that not all afterlife fantasies are good. Maybe the bad ones can be categorized by having an overtly detrimental effect on life on this earth. I don't believe that the two necessarily go hand in hand, though with fundamentalists of any kind, they usually do.

In "The God Delusion", Dawkins admits that he's got shreds of agnosticism in him -- they're just so small that he feels that 'atheist' more accurately sums him up. The book is very convincing, but his target of attack is largely the judeo-Christian image of "God", which isn't really that hard to pick apart. I remain agnostic after reading the book, though certainly atheistic of the biblical God (but I didn't need Dawkins for that).

You remind me of almost every single person I've known who had organized religion crammed down their throats, then came to reject it later in life. You're all left with a very bitter taste of anything even remotely 'spiritual'. I believe this results in what seems to be the natural human tendency to go from one extreme to the other.