Agnosticism IS the most dishonest position

[Peebothuhlu]

That's a reasonable way to put it. 

Still, I think that when issues of colonial oppression and political violence are causing turbulence, religion mostly provides a rallying point and a useful identity. Take that away, and people would still fight. 

No one has addressed my earlier question: in nearly all cities in nearly the whole of the 19th and 20th centuries, Protestants and Catholics have not bombed each other. What makes N. Ireland the exception? People who simply say that it's religious sectarianism should explain why those two sects have a problem only there.

And we should also acknowledge that the sectarianism there has no element of personal acceptance of a religious credo. As all of that region becomes less religious, it seems certain that more and more people in N. Ireland are in fact atheists. So we end up with the paradoxical situation that Protestant atheists are attacking Catholic atheists and vice versa.

I suspect that even our colleague Mr. Ire, who is an atheist and seems rather to dislike religion, knows whether he is Catholic or Protestant in the terms of the N. Ireland battles. When it becomes purely tribal rather than credal, I question whether it is actually religion. Enmity could then just as easily be aligned along the lines of which football team one supports. But it does suggest a reason as to why Mr. Ire might be so emotional about all this. If he is defining "religion" as merely violent tribes, his ire would be more understandable.

Because, in the case of Northern Ireland, religion is one of the foundational aspects of discrimination and oppression. It really is as simple as that.

To the extent that two people of different aspects of the same faith pretty much HAD to leave their land of birth and travel to the other side of the world so that their relation ship could flourish into a family and their children did NOT suffer under such a bipartisan environment.

Cheers.

Not at work.