Microserfs....Now there's a blast from the .com past! Haven't read it since the late nineties, but the debate in the book over the use of either all one colour of Lego or any colour piece provided it's fit for purpose will stay with me forever! That, and the flat food under the door!

Just brilliant............

I also really admire how you have the guts and conviction to state your atheistic standpoint - and you are so right about how religious conflict is a real and very present danger to all. Naturally, such religiously-motivated zeal is encouraged and embraced by the leading figures in the world's only real "superpower" - frankly that scares the shit out of more than Al Qaeda......

Yes, coz athiests never caused any deaths, extremism, nor have ever killed anyone in the name of an ideology - oh, wait, millions dead in Soviet Russia, millions more over a much longer period in Communist China - damn, we'll just have to conclude all humans can be violent a-holes who justify their a-holeness by some outside authority, and not blame it on what they happen to believe at this rate....?

Give me the jihad/inquisition/witchburning that compares with Soviet Russia's past of millions dead, or China's ongoing atrocities, and I'll concede my point.

Seriously, blaming religion for sectarian violence is like blaming the pigskin ball for soccer hooligan violence - meaningless, facile and it shifts the blame to where your own sectarian beliefs want it to be.

But the cause of their deaths was not because of the atheism - it wasn't a case of 'I'm atheist and you aren't, so you must die'.

otherwise we could lambast vegetarians for genocide because of Hitler not eating meat.

But I conceed your point that it is idiotic ideologies that can cause death. It doesn't have to be a 'religion'.

Cynicism yet optimism. Hmmm. Interesting.