Why Do We Let New Atheists and Religious Zealots Dominate the Conversation About Religion?

“Religion” is a big word, maybe too big. It is one of those words, like “artist,” capacious enough to denote both a thing and its near opposite. Religion is the Tao Te Ching and Dianetics.  Augustine and Koresh. Hillel and Kahane, Rumi and bin Laden. So why does the public conversation around religion often seem so cramped and stunted? Why is it dominated by people who are fond of reducing it to thumbs-up, thumbs-down propositions that leave no room for the way most people think about it? The philosophies at the heart of the great traditions emphasize the importance of empathy above all other human values, but the people at the extremes of the God debate don’t seem to know that. Maybe that’s why they seem so humorless. They seem impervious to the essentially comic nature of the frustrating, human bind we’re all in. The fundamentalists cultivate something like a sulky teenager’s romanticized notion of love, and the atheists a grumpy old bugger’s lack of belief in such nonsense. But love of the Divine isn’t a feeling, or a belief, it’s something you make yourself available to. Read the complete article at -- http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-do-we-let-new-atheists-and-religious-zealots-dominate-conversation-about-religion