• Anybody remember personal freedom?

To a man/woman, they find a way to only accept naturalistic explanations in their work - though I often tease them when there's a particularly intractable problem with "maybe jesus wants it that way".

Gods require belief – belief by definition is without foundation, un-testable, not subject to logical scrutiny. Beliefs and gods cannot be refuted.

Science does not require, in fact shuns, belief. A claim (hypothesis or theory) in science must be testable, must withstand logical scrutiny, and must be revised when the evidence indicates that it doesn’t hold up.

As far as Wicca goes, how can it possibly be different than any other belief? What’s a magical practice? Praying that you find your car keys or that the universe will make an exception in your mother’s case and remove a Stage IV cancer? Transubstantiation? That people spontaneously rise up from the dead and bodily ascent into the sky without mechanical aid? That Thor throws lightening bolts?

If you went to an auto mechanic to have your car fixed and he returned it in the same condition saying "Jesus wants it that way", would you accept that? I bet not. So whay would you accept that the reason for anything in the natural world has a god behind it? How can you draw a rational line between what interests a god and what doesn't?

Had the judge ruled that it wasn’t in the child’s best interest to inoculate his thinking with religious belief of any kind I could by that. For the judge to discriminate between kinds of belief is unconscionable (not to mention unconstitutional).