I love religion!

[David Henson]

I'm an atheist who is fascinated by religion, and I am also very keen to empathise with religious views, and regard them with much value. Someone like Dawkins attacks faith at a literalist base value, and it come across, to me, that he has no imagination and doesn't actually know what he's talking about regarding the complexities of religious belief.

Dawkins is a good scientist, a poor intellectual and isn't very informed on the God and Bible of which he speaks. He has, in my opinion, an agenda for a sort of scientific dogma not unlike the narrow minded religious efforts in the past that have failed. That isn't to say that he is uninformed when it comes to religion but I suspect that he is just that. Hitchens, on the other hand is a somewhat more astute intellectual and has a considerable knowledge of religion. The problem with Hitchens is that is is only more informed on the Bible from a religious perspective. He is the one that I can relate to the most, not because of his knowledge of religion, which is far superior to my own, but because of his hatred for religion, which I also share. Religion is far more damaging to the search for accurate truth of the Bible than any of those types of pundits could ever possibly be, but their primary objective is not of the Bible as much as it is religion.

To understand many people's religious ideas it is vital to at least see things from their perspective, in order to understand the idea; almost like 'extreme philosophy' whereby you have to get your head totally around something that makes no sense to you.

To me religion makes sense. I get it, and I think I get people's irreligious ideas as well; that makes sense as well. I think it is important to realize what religious means to the individual person, though. The religious, the social, the political etc. can be an intensely personal thing. To me, religion implies organization rather than theology or theism.

All religion has an intrinsic value; by this I don't mean the herd mentality of simple dogmatic religion, but that religion itself is a necessary part of our nature. Simply put it cannot be separated from our species, when regarded from any perspective, be that anthropological, historical, social, psychological, archaeological, etc.

Historically speaking I suppose that is true, but that could possibly change.

So, as the title says, I love religion, and think that many (maybe most) atheists don't know what they are talking about when criticising the ideas.

May I ask why on Earth you of all people would "love religion?"