UT: I have to agree with Black Wolf on this - there are very few places in the world with anything like as much extremism as the USA. For the most part, people are able to get along very well.
I may disagree with people's beliefs or principles, but I have no objection to them being able to hold those beliefs, unless they try to force them on me or others. Most religions are now very modern, and highly tolerant of other cultures and faiths. The only exceptions AFAIK are in the USA and Africa, where Christians have rather hard-line and conservative views (this is a gross generalization, of course. Not every Christian is a fundie, but the ones that are tend to make a lot of noise in these places), and the extremist Islamic groups in the Middle East.
Now, these groups are a tiny minority - though they are very vocal about their views - and simply do not represent the vast majority of religious people around the world. Your comment that
"
in order for us to move forward, the mainstream religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism must adapt to the changing world around them. It's as simple as that: humanity can not be held back by pretenses that existed before the New World was even discovered"
is simply insulting to the vast majority of people of faith. Of course, there are die-hard old-school zealots about, but they have a habit of getting ignored, marginalised by the rest of the community, and dying of old age still spouting the same tired old line. Then there's no more problem. The only place this seems to fail to happen on a large scale is Africa and the US (for Christianity), and parts of the Middle East (for Islam, on a smaller scale). The fact is, the problem is not with the religions, it's with the people. Why people act like this is a mystery to me, but there must be something wrong with the way the society works. Now, in Africa and the Middle East, that's not entirely surprising, with many countries being fairly young (arising from the collapse of the empires) or still being largely undeveloped economically, technologically or educationally. But America claims to be the Leader of the World in terms of culture, economics, "freedom" and technology. So what's going on in America to turn people into these hard-core fundamentalist nutjobs?
Originally posted by aldo:
I haven't seen any religion creeping into UK government, despite some of the more worrying security measures that have been taken during the last few years. Offhand, I can't think of any particularly overtly religious government/nation in Europe.
Turkey? Though I don't know whether you'd classify them as Europe or Asia Minor. Or both....
As for UK religion, I've never liked the thing about schools having to have a daily act of worship. I found that quite offensive from an early age (not least because I hated singing hymns!), and I wish they'd change that. It doesn't say
Christian worship though, so that's a plus...
