i still haven't found what i'm looking for...

good morning everybody. i am having a big holiday party tonight and as such do not have much time, sadly, today to share with you. but, in the holiday spirit, i wanted to attempt to put to bed, once and for all, this whole religion thread that i've been on.

i'd like to think that i am big enough to admit when i'm wrong. not that i'm wrong here, folks, but i feel like i've been a little too vituperative and i'd like to soften, just a bit, my position*. and here it is: i have really good, lifelong friends that are religious. my parents are deeply religious. i have people in my day- to- day life that are religious. most of my best friends' parents are deeply religious.

i respect them, i respect their decisions. i disagree with them on a host of things, but i respect them as people and celebrate their freedom and celebrate their individuality. but both christianity and islam** leave a really bad taste in my mouth, one that i cannot help and one that i do not apologize for.

i blame religion for way more of the world's problems than solutions. i do not like how it makes people act, what it makes people do, what people get away with using it as a guise or justification, and how other people use it to further their agendas and increase their own power. fundamentally when i look at it, i see way more bad than good***.

i try really hard to be a good person. i don't need religion to do this. if it helps someone else to be a better person, that's great, i guess. i can't argue with that. unfortunately i just do not feel like that is the predominant case. in fact, i feel like the converse is usually true.

i will take my comments off the air. see you again soon.

~lee.

*interesting to me that in a sense this whole dialogue has helped me work some things out in my own mind. and i'd like to thank myself for that.

**judaism, interestingly enough, i've never really been bothered by. i grew up in a heavily jewish section of atlanta and spent a lot of time around it. i actually think that a lot of it is pretty beautiful-- that, of course, is not to say that i don't find fault with it. but in general, it doesn't raise my ire the way that both christianity and islam do.

***additionally i do not like green eggs and ham, goddamnit.