Whether the Pope chooses to capitulate or not does not matter. The massive enterprise known as the Vatican only serves to promote a set of superstitions and delusions that have infected human brains for centuries. That place needs to be shut down. They need to return all the money they've stolen from the poor and the place needs to be turned into a museum of primitive thinking.

With regards to ridiculing them. Tolerance is a delicate thing.

What if you had a million people still believing and promoting the "fact" that blood-letting and human sacrifice were necessary in order to cure disease and promote good crops? And what if they pointed to a set of words chiseled out on some stones as being the command from their god to engage in human sacrifice? And they demanded legal protection from our government? And, of course, tax exemption? And, of course, to be able to teach this to your kids and my kids in school? And every politician had to swear that they believed in this horse-shit because they need those million votes?

What do you do then? Do you embrace and tolerate them? Or to you fight them at every corner, even ridicule them, in order to eradicate their influence form society?

Should a politician who says her or she believes in this shit be allowed to hold office? Should a President swear on the chiseled tablets as a sign of entering into a covenant with the people? Should a whole nation proclaim to be under the protection of these gods who want human sacrifice?

No, of course not. And if you tolerate them. If we accept them. If we allow them to even for a microsecond sit at the same table with scientists we fail to evolve as humans.

You have to laugh at them in order to shift them into an uncomfortable position where they'll have to really question what they are saying. Why don't we, as adults, say we believe in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus? Nobody has proven they don't exist? In fact, you can't prove they don't exist. Yet anyone would be laughed out of a room if they proclaimed these kinds of beliefs. And that would be the right reaction.

No, this is nonsense. It isn't the 1,500's any more. A creationist and their horse-shit have no place anywhere near scientific facts, schools and certainly nowhere related to an online search of the Theory of Evolution. To allow such a thing is a disservice to humanity.

This needs to stop. Let's stop pretending it is OK to believe in flying horsemen, talking snakes, singing bushes, parting seas, getting help from a god on a test while on the other side of town a little kid is dead from cancer, etc., etc., etc.

I am not a militant atheist but I am really getting tired of the bullshit. The constant barrage of nonsense being placed on a level plane with science isn't sitting well with me. None of this nonsense deserves any respect at all. None of it. They get rich of the poor and our governments give them special standing. That's irrational. Absolutely irrational.

Nearly everyone on this planet today owes their lives to science. Yet we don't ridicule morons in funny hats who believe in singing bushes and supernatural beings.

Here's the problem: Politicians like to talk about economic disparity. They do not talk about the real long term problem of intellectual disparity. Fast forward to 100 years from now. If things don't change we will have a situation where there will be a huge gap between those educated in the sciences and those left in the dark through supernatural beliefs and the lack of education.

I know ignorant religious people who home-school their kids and teach them such nonsense as the earth being 5,000 years old. They are so far behind already that they might as well be cave men with iPhones. It's sad, really. They live their lives justifying everything that happens through divine intervention and intent. They are absolutely and totally ignorant in the context of modern scientific knowledge and completely closed to learning or considering anything new. For all they know the earth might as well be flat. I can see a future where it won't be rich vs. poor but ignorant religious vs. scientifically literate. This disparity will cause cataclysmic clashes. I mean, just take a look at some of these tribes in the middle east. They ARE cave-men with iPhones.

No, you have to laugh and ridicule them. In 2015 these ideologies do not deserve any respect whatsoever. None.

Harsh? Probably.

I have done this to people BTW. In some cases they've cussed me out and in a some they have engaged me in conversation. No, I am not an ass about it. I simply smile and politely ask something like "You don't really believe that stuff, do you?". Have I convinced anyone? Don't know, but I did make them think. One of my favorite questions is: "Do you really believe in a singing bush?" and it goes from there.