Religion

has done a lot of damage over the centuries, but I think that if it weren't religion, it would just be something else. Human beings could easily find another excuse to behave in cruel and baffling ways. I guess what's unique and handy about religion, compared to fighting over land or racial conflicts, is that religion shifts the blame - God told me to! But even though the old Testement is full of crazy rules and smiting and stoning, there isn't a lot of harmful stuff in the Four Gospels. In fact, what surprised me when I read them was that there didn't seem to be a lot in them at all. It was just kind of like Jesus went here and then he went there, and he ate lunch with these people, and he got in a boat, and peformed this miracle and raised that guy from the dead, and touched some lepers, and rode on a donkey,etc. Actually, I'm surprised that such pacifist beliefs like love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek weren't conveniently edited out of the bible at some point in history. To me that's the real miracle of Christianity.