Possibly it is. I'll be honest, if so then I'll be the first one celebrating. I'm not religious, but my wife is very religious. I suppose it is not surprising, both her father and younger brother were priests. It's taken me quite a long time to learn to appreciate what she gets from religion. I'll tell you, without pretense, that it has been challenging for me. However, at least for me (and you may very well find it different) I came to a realisation that I was being unreasonably biased against my wife's religion. In fact I had my own religion: science -- which I believed in quite strongly. I'm not talking about accepting models because they are useful. I generally believed these models to be true. Eventually I started to question why I believed the models to be true. Consistent things are often not as they appear. Why do I believe this consistent thing to be true. At least for me, I decided it's just another religion. And strangely, that allowed me to abandon it. I now believe in a very strange religion in which the universe appears to me to probably be very different, although consistent with our scientific models. Possibly I'm the only one in that religion and I have no problem with that.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that, especially those of us who have a hard time with religion fall just as easily into our own religions. That's an embarrassing and difficult thing to look at. I literally moved from my native Canada to Japan, partly because I was frustrated with the implied Christianity of Canadian society -- almost as if it's a matter of common sense that you will be Christian if you aren't already spoken for by a different religion. I really enjoyed the fact that Christmas in Japan meant going out with your girlfriend to Kentucky Fried Chicken (seriously, you have to book 3 months in advance!)

This is a pretty personal thing to post on a public forum, but I think it should be fine to say these kinds of things (or at least I wish to live in a world where it is), so hopefully nobody will take offense. But, (again my personal opinion, which I hope you will take as just an old guy being friendly) my wife really enjoys her religion. It brings many good things for her and, to be completely honest, while her religion has doctrine (which, incidentally, not all religions have) I haven't actually met anybody in her church that demands that doctrine.

I was going to say that I have not met a single person who really had any interest in exploring the world beyond their doctrine in a church, but this is actually not true. One of my wife's friends is a priest who got a double major in astronomy and computer science (and had a pile of scholarships and studied in a whole bunch of famous universities). Then he became a priest. I asked him why, with the education he had that he decided to become a priest. He just said that he enjoyed being a priest. He believes in his religion and has no way to reconcile his education and his beliefs, but he is completely OK with that.

I really miss him to be honest. He got posted to Malaysia (being a priest is a super hard job). He's one of the few people I've met in a church who ever accepted me for who I am and what I believe. He frequently stood up for me and explained to other people that not everybody believes what they believe. I was very grateful for that.

These days, even though I don't believe what other people believe, I feel it is important to respect that belief. In human life there are a lot of contradictions. There are many things that don't match up (like my wife's friend, the priest). However, we all have biases and we all have points beyond which we regretfully don't look. We look past our own bigotry and somehow think that only our view must be right. Ironically, we tend to all be united in our discrimination.

It's just my idea and it may be horribly flawed, but I think we need to first accept other people as they are before we invite them into our own field of vision. Sometimes that's hard to do.

Anyway, again, I apologise if this meets you at a time when you aren't really in the mood to read it. I hope you take it in the spirit in which it is offered -- just an old guy rambling on about stuff that probably doesn't matter ;-) Even if I don't agree with you, I've really enjoyed thinking about what you have had to say. Thank you!