Well...you aren't exactly opening up for debate here. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] You are making some claims about religion, explaining your views on science and reason and then you set religion aside, and call religious belief 'continued ignorance' and you describe people who believe the same way you do as 'thinking individuals'.

Most people who set their faith in science and empirical reason, like I do for instance, are also believers. We believe in rational explanations, empirical proof and deductive reasoning as ways to explain the world around us.

We don't 'know' anything more than any religous man does, (maybe even less, a religious person may very well be in the cutting end of a science) but the view we have is practical. It works, it may very well be right and maybe we can even use it for something.

But it would be 'ignorant' to fail to see the reasons why people chose religion as their belief, and to not have an open mind is the greatest threat to rational thinking there is. To boneheadedly bash a belief down is not something a 'thinking individual' should do easily.

And besides. The history of science, reason and empirical thinking is filled with 'fairy tales' and boneheaded belief. Maybe we should sweep that frontyard before starting to wave fingers around at others.