John McCain, who was baptized, raised, and educated (at an exclusive private school in Alexandria, Virginia) in the Episcopal faith but recently declared himself a Baptist in a transparent effort to pander to a heavily Baptist South Carolina primary electorate, is hardly in the best position to make informed judgments about who is or is not well grounded in any religion. (Read more about McCain's rationale for suddenly declaring himself a Baptist in my Sept. 24 post on The Secularist's Corner .)

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No, of course I don't believe in life after death--not as a return of consciousness, as a physical resurrection of the body, or as reincarnation in some other state of being. I do believe that the understandable desire for immortality, and for reunion with loved ones who have gone before, is the chief reason for the persistence of religion in the modern world.

We are an arrogant species. Even the most tough-minded rationalists have trouble contemplating their own extinction. Susan B. Anthony, an agnostic (although she hid her beliefs in order to avoid offending Christian suffragists), mused, "If it be true that we die like the flower, leaving behind only the fragrance...what a delusion has the race ever been in..what a dream is the life of man."

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I do not agree with the Dalai Lama that all religious traditions carry basically the same message of love, compassion, and forgiveness. The truth is that there is good and evil in all religious traditions--as there is in every other human institution and every individual human being. Sweeping statements of pro-religious propaganda, even (or especially) when they are made by men as admirable as the Dalai Lama, have the effect of smothering rational discussion about the pros and cons of any and all religion.

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Why wouldn't the world benefit from an alliance between science and those forms of religion that regard the stewardship of the earth as a moral obligation? Indeed, the preservation of the environment for future generations is both a moral and a practical necessity--something that intelligent, decent people of any faith or no faith can and must recognize. If we fail to rise to the challenge, we will cease to exist as a species.

Philosophical questions about the ultimate compatibility of science and religion are really irrelevant here. At some point, faith always accepts the supernatural in ways that evidence-based science does not, but that certainly poses no barrier to cooperation between science and religions that also embrace secular knowledge. The broadest possible participation is necessary if we are to save our planet from the dangers of global warming; the heedless use of toxins associated with rapid industrialization (China being one of the prime examples); and, above all, our own greed.

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Let me get this straight. We have an American president making noises about World War III, wildfires in California, a record rate of home foreclosures, etc., etc., and somewhere in America, people are supposedly worried about the religious and satanic implications of Halloween. I suppose if you believe that ghosts and demons exist, you might actually stay awake at night mulling this over.

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