That isn't to say, though, that religions are without flaw as obviously they all have them, whether at their origins or in their intepretations or in their practices. It's not my business how religions sort out their internal problems. What is my business is where they intersect with my life.

Tolerance, accommodation, even begruding mutual acceptance can all help lessen the frictions that appear at the interface between religious and secular life, but those are all two-way streets. It's not tolerance or accommodation if I have to follow your religion's laws, no matter how firmly you believe them to be unique and faultless. You have to grant me the same respect toward my beliefs, whatever they are, within reason.

It's like Instapundit, but all in one post! Heh. It's the Religion of Peace update:......

Consider: The United States has contributed two of the worlds fastest growing religions to mankind, Mormanism and Scientology. Apparantly the long established historical religions do not meet the needs that many people have to believe in something ridiculous.

There will always be nutballs who find solace in silly mythical stories--but I think that it is a hopeful sign that the countries with the most robust economies and democratic political systems are seeing the role of religion deminish.

While the United States may be less advanced in this regard than folks in the nordic countries or Japan, the long-term trend is the deminishment of religion. It may take a while, but the pattern of historical change seems pretty resillient.

A great explanation of the foundation of Mormanism is given by Mark Twain in 'Roughing It'. His conclusion, tongue in cheek, is to wonder how he could ever doubt the veracity of so many people who claim witness to seeing the golden tablets upon which the Book of Morman was delivered to Joseph Smith before the Angel Moroni took them back, never to be seen again by human eyes.

And while we do not yet have a modern version of Samual Clemons to explain Scientology to us can it be long before someone solves the puzzle as to why a growing numbr of our fellow human beings willingly believe in a faith founded on science fiction fantasy?

In the context of a rational society, however, these things tend to be moderated. As Rothstein notes in the last sentence of the excerpt, the United States is an example of a society that is both deeply religious and yet tolerant of iconoclasm.

What is the definition of "deeply religious"? There is incredible disagreement as to the "religiousity" of US citizens. Even if one accepts a measure of 40%--which is around the norm in many self-reported studies that ask about church attendance--then the notion of the country as being "deeply religious" is suspect.

Political scientists who have looked historically at the data argue that there is a significant and discernable trend of lower attendance at church.

I would tend to agree with the hegelian sentiments of someone like Fukayama that the role of religion is undoubtedly going to be minimized in the face of science and rationalism.