I think these attitudes concerning religion belong to the topics where different European countries differ most from each other.

i wonder what reaction if they had tried this caper in the vatican...

since this sin't a conversation about religion per se, let's focus on the political aspects.

jake's right in that it's undemocratic to claim special preciousness when you are willing to dip into politics, it's like having your cake and eating it too.

katrin is right that believers constitute a non-trivial part of the left's conscience, though obviously not exclusively, many atheists are as or more moral than religious people.

if we had had to wait for atheists to make enough noise about civil rights in the 60's, rosa'd probably still be riding at the back of the bus.

likewise with many of the environmental protests in germany.

jake's acerbic jibes at religion, hilarious as i find them, don't unite the two factions, and therefore come across as hard, uncompromising and judgmental as any churchman.

yet i'd trust that rigor more than any number of soapy platitudes that are the daily pablum of the institutional churches, though i don't share the atheism.

the left needs to unite and leave behind division, there are two few of us to be able to afford squabbling.

i would not appreciate PR bothering my concentration field if i were composing with a friend, for example, (my form of worship) and i think people should have some protection from invasive events like that, whatever they are doing.

i do sympathise with those protesting against putin, but i think this was too puerile to really matter much. putting them in prison is absurdly over the top.

the reaction on the other hand proves that the symbolism has too much power over people, from the icons of the church, to the media-fanned fury over those symbols being desecrated, they're just symbols.

too much fuss over nothing, and putin looks a fool for being so easily irked. his persecution of PR shows him for a humourless autocrat, big surprise!

church and state are ugly bedfellows and PR were right to protest... the way they chose is questionable, but not the impulse or the guts to follow through.

my beef with religion is not just the astonishing pettiness, boring, redundant theology and endless moralising, it's how it's used as whitewash to try and make scoundrels look better as they do the devil's work, and how it serves as cheap opium to keep the people passive under oppression.

all the pomp and circumstance of modern christianity is repugnant, but nuns on a bus, MLK and the berrigans deeply inspiring. it's not so simple.

spirituality doesn't need heirarchy, patriarchy or monuments, icons, canons or pomp. it just needs to be real. luckily there are some who realise that, just as we are lucky many atheists have empathy, compassion and nobility of character. this can be a win-win, if we want it to be.

does this get the record for longest ET argument ever yet?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty