This week's prize for the cultural equivalent of identifying the Pope's religious affiliation and revealing the sanitary habits of grizzly bears goes to..... The Times (that's The Times of London to those who come from a country that routinely identifies `Paris' as `Paris, France' lest people get confused with the Texas version), which has an article pointing out that religion is divisive and harmful to society. Sorry, gents, the Bible got there first, Luke 12:49-53. No need to pay some thinktank to come up with that gem.

You can read the full article here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tl...

A few of thoughts come to mind. 

First, this is more evidence that the latest cultural objections to religion are rooted not so much in epistemological considerations as in aesthetic judgements.  Divisiveness is distasteful; religion is divisive; therefore, religion is distasteful.  A bit of a bummer for those who want Christianity to be hip and cool, but there you go.

Second, as harmful and divisive as many religious people have been, the record of certain secular ideologies (Marxism, Nazism etc) is even worse.  The common factor does not seem to be belief in God, or some form of sacred system, but human beings and, perhaps, belief in - ahem - the existence and accessibility of truth as a concept.  Religion can be harmful, but perhaps its role is rather as an idiom for the nastiness of fallen human nature than its cause.  And to talk about a general concept of `religion' seems to be a rather careless generalization, lumping together as it does all manner of belief systems and making a general conclusion about them. 

Third, and piggy-backing on the first point above, since when was divisiveness a problem?  Since the bland, disempowering aesthetics of so much modern middle-class blather took the place of belief in truth, methinks.  Precisely the same aesthetics that some are telling us represent the very future of - ummm - the Christian religion........