Dan:

You said:  Doesn't it frighten you that about 99% of this planet's
denizens are (generally) mindless adherents of one formal religious
sect
or another?

I'm not certain why such a thing should frighten me (us.)  As an
atheist, you are also closed off to the possibility of a theistic
alternative.  As an agnostic, it is both closed mindedness and
intolerance that I most fear.  Atheist, Muslim, Jew, Christian -- its
those among them that are closed minded and intolerant (more
appropriately referred to as fundamentalist) that scare me.  They scare
me because they want to make everyone else like them.  The long for the
nostalgic notion of their own grand narrative being imposed and coerced
upon others.  Thank God (oops) the atheists haven't organized, but
there are the fundamentalists among them; they would annialate theists
if they had the chance.

Most of us ARE mindless adherents to something or another.  Because we
use language, and it is taken so much for granted, it makes it
necessarily so.

$.02

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