"...the faith card simply cannot be allowed in adult conversation."

Matt Thornton makes his bones as a martial arts coach, and he posts blog wise, infrequently, at best. Nevertheless they're always deeply interesting and philosophically dense. Lengthy, as well. Click over, full post, etc, etc...

Thornton's Guerilla_Blog - Carving Nature at the Joints:

"...many religious people will call full stop, and they will play the faith card. The faith card is simply this; it is a matter of faith. And on that note, all possibility of mature dialogue is ended. And that is the moment of admission by them, that there is no evidence for the particular proposition being espoused.

All of us within the world of the rational, reality-based community have a fundamental, and unmistakable responsibility when this happens. It is on us to explain to them, that the faith card simply cannot be allowed in adult conversation...

The moment we allow a belief without evidence, “faith”, to be entered into the public dialogue, is the moment we concede all the advances of the enlightenment, and negligently allow the forces of barbarism and superstition the fuel needed to drag us kicking and screaming back into the dark ages of ignorance, and human stupidity...

As we speak there are Christian pastors and missionaries in Africa that are actively preaching the ‘sin’ of condom use, in areas that are ravaged by AIDS. There are religious groups in various states that are preparing petitions to ban gay and lesbian Americans from being able to marry each other. There are suicide bombers strapping on explosive vests, in the belief that they will have an amazing sex life post death. And there are millions of women unable to go to school, and forced to wear bee-keeper suits, all because of faith based beliefs which hold no more basis in factual reality then does the idea that Earth rests on the back of a turtle. And because it is all being done in the name of some “faith”, we as rational human beings are supposed to render the topic off limits in terms of criticism, satire, and the reason based debate that we would apply to every other field of human knowledge?

When we really think about this we should all realize, that it is truly demented."