Well, thank you both for finding my posts interesting instead of just being shocked about me defending the more open-minded, non-fundamental type of churches.

The 'fairy-tales' you listed up, well, I guess a lot of the churchgoers I know, me included, have a lot of difficulties firmly believing in them. I for my part, e.g. I don't exclude the possibility of an after-life in an unknown form, and you could even find arguments from physics thinking of atoms, elementary particles, quarks and pure energy as the final component of everything. Science actually has to state that we humans don't really know everything, we can't grasp what infinity of space actually means etc. So personally, as a principle, I don't exclude things 100%. I don't think that makes me superstitious, I like watching scientific TV programs like a well-known astrophysics series by a German physicist, and all in all I'm quite a scientific-thinking type myself, having spent some time on theory of science in my studies, too. Actually, I'm a pretty bad 'believer' (don't tell my employer, the Protestant Church of Westphalia, for which I play the organ), but as I said, I try to hold on to a certain level of faith and listen to the sermons. And the Protestant church tends to take some of these "fairy-tale" elements as "symbols", not as pure facts, so there is a certain degree of decomposition of concrete faith going on, too. I've heard many protestant theology students say: "The university studies of theology made me lose my faith - and get it back on a much less concrete, more intellectual level".
Anyway, the original point why I got involved here has to do with this:



I have to defend my church against being suspected of endorsing, supporting or whitewashing the historic cruelties committed in the name of various religions. All I hear in church, the attitudes conveyed, the interpretations of Bible verses, everything contributes to making the members more peaceful, more caring instead of more hostile and aggressive.
So, at least when considering the attitude of several open-minded present day church organizations, I regard a large part of your thread as extremely one-sided, overgeneralizing and full of hate against religion in general, much more emotional than rational. (I can understand your rage regarding the aspect of hypocrisy, I share that with respect to some church members and also politicians).