[Borges]

I define religious beliefs as those taken purely on faith. So ideally, scientific beliefs should not be religious...in that sense anyway. Of course this is shaky territory these days. Thanks for info about the Inquisition. No one expects the...oh never mind.

But have you read a lot about Calvin's Geneva? Martin Seymour Smith in his '100 Most Influential Books of all time' refers to it as a blueprint for the Third Reich. Ironically, the Calvinists were quite welcoming to the Jews, compared to the way they were treated by the established Church at the time anyway.

[js1138]

There actually has been a study along the lines of this article. It was done by studying the health of European monarchs, who by tradition have had millions of people praying for them every day and every week.

The attempt to excuse the Inquisition as less evil (by numeric count) than communisiom is amusing. It ignores the question of what a religion founded by Jesus was doing murdering and torturing people, and it ignores the question of why the religion itself didn't prevent it from happening.

Obviously theocracies can be evil, regardless of the nominal religion they spring from.