It's hard to get through long periods of being ill and maintain some hope that there's maybe a reason, or at least a way through. I can understand why some people would use their religious beliefs as their strength. I think, though, that it's worth keeping in mind that many people can reconcile belief in God with scientific reality, it's not a matter of choosing one or the other.

I think "millions of billions" of people is a slight hyperbole as well, in light of the statistics in my post above. What about Hindus who believe that the world was created by Brahman, is that OK with you?

I enjoy living in a multicultural city which celebrates Diwali and Eid as well as Christmas and Easter. I enjoy learning about other religions and I'm glad my daughter can learn about them in school. What I find a bit disturbing is when adherents of any religion find it necessary to deny reality for some reason. And what I will vocally object to is someone trying to teach my daughter that the earth is young and that evolution didn't happen, when there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. As I said, I'm glad I don't have to worry about it here.

For the record, I dislike the other extreme as well, advocated by people like Richard Dawkins, who insist that atheism is the only reality, science is the only way to that reality, and that religion is dangerous self-delusion. That isn't always the case, and the vast majority of the religious people I've known have been kind and peacable souls. Though I did work in a school with some fundamentalist Muslim students and found them to have been largely devoid of creativity and individual ideas; there was no "spark" in their eyes. Endless hours in the mosque repeating Koran verses seemed to have sucked it out of them.

If you'd like to have a dialogue about the issues raised in my previous post, feel free. Otherwise I'll have a second closer look at previous posts here and address some of the questions you yourself have asked.

Cheers,
Linda.