Reply #22: Some points from this article I really can relate to:

[raccoon]

...many progressive religionists understand God not as some old man in the sky, but as a name we give the reality of all of being, a God that does not "exist" but is, indeed, Existence itself...

To me, that's another way of saying “God is reality."

Imagine if your education in literature ended with Tom Sawyer and the last math you learned was pre-algebra...You wouldn't take seriously the possibility that literature can be transformative or that good math can put men on the moon. But that's exactly the situation when it comes to most religious thought today. People learn the simple stuff as children, and then, unsurprisingly, regard religion as childish.

Of course, many people never learn anything beyond the simple stuff.

Here in America, hundreds of millions of people believe in Intelligent Design, in life beginning at conception, and in a notion of a retributive God...They "believe in" these things (notice the locution) because they think religion is at the core of their lives. Our political debates are not about evolutionary biology, civil liberties, or pre-existing conditions; they are about a terrified minority, afraid that society is slipping away from all it holds dear.

A terrified minority that is also loud and obnoxious, and seems to be getting more and more so.

Our lunatic fringe has grown in size as the bulwarks of its society have begun to crumble (a black man is president, homosexuals are getting married), and, whether explicitly religious or not, the rage they display is the same fundamentalism as that which motivates their Islamist enemies.

You can say that again...