From: CH8SGHCYW8OGCW8FGW78CG@NCNC.XOM   
      
   Interesting stuff. Scruton on Religion in this week's Spectator:   
      
   'Those are big questions, not to be solved by a TV programme, so here in   
   outline are my answers. Religions survive and flourish because they are a   
   call to membership - they provide customs, beliefs and rituals that unite   
   the generations in a shared way of life, and implant the seeds of mutual   
   respect. Like every form of social life, they are inflamed at the edges,   
   where they compete for territory with other faiths. To blame religion for   
   the wars conducted in its name, however, is like blaming love for the Trojan   
   war. All human motives, even the most noble, will feed the flames of   
   conflict when subsumed by the 'territorial imperative' - this too Darwin   
   teaches us, and Dawkins surely must have noticed it. Take religion away, as   
   the Nazis and the communists did, and you do nothing to suppress the pursuit   
   of Lebensraum. You simply remove the principal source of mercy in the   
   ordinary human heart and so make war pitiless; atheism found its proof at   
   Stalingrad.'   
      
      
      
   http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=7185&page=3   
      
      
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)