Hi - I've been lurking around this site now for a few months and have been careful not to jump to any quick conclusions about it, though on the whole it impresses me that its core members and quite a few others show remarkable patience and forbearance in their determination to counter superstition with fact. I know from years of doing something similar as a solo effort myself that it does get tedious finding oneself having to repeat rather basic and obviously factual counter-arguments to grandiose and unfounded claims. Worse, the claimants one is arguing against often have so much of their identity wrapped up in their indefensible ideology that they defend it all the more, adding tremendously to the tedium and adding also real risk of distraction into personal offence and other umbrages taken by people who (wrongly) feel that they are under personal attack just because one of their delusions is being shown up.

So congratulations all round to those of you who stay interested and keep it interesting at the same time, and who manage to avoid the trap of ad hominem enough to get the rationalist viewpoint across more or less intact every time.

My own aversion to religion has less to do with how preposterous the notions might be that it is based on, or even that humanity still shows a worrying tendency to favour "ready made" answers with origins in ignorance to a more rational understanding of itself. It has more to do with the built-in control mechanisms that any religion, once it gains currency, seeks to exert over the rest of us. Or better put, how religion provides a perfect vehicle for people to behave in just that way. I have made the accusation against rabid preacher and superficially benign buddhist monk alike, and have yet to hear anything from any of these propagandists that dissuades me from my view. They are as convinced that they are right as they are that they have the right on that basis to feel superior to anyone else who does not agree with them. This is the crucial factor underpinning control freakery and I, from an early age, refuse to be controlled by freaks in any sense, be they deluded religious fools, foolish bosses at work, foolish politicians etc.

For that reason my work career has tended to push in the "consultant" direction - happy to lend a hand but loath to be pay-rolled, and for a few years now IT has been a good vehicle to pursue such a career path. It has also meant a lot of travelling and being based in various parts of the world, a real boon to me also as it has allowed me to pursue my real interests, archaeology and what might be loosely termed amateur anthropology to a much greater degree, and with much more fulfilling reward, than had I stayed put.

Which is bringing me round to my question - but first an observation. In the US I was struck by the huge percentage of the population which never goes anywhere, even though job mobility within the country often moves people right across the continent (several times), as might pursuing one's education. But what I found extremely lacking was any kind of motivation to travel of one's own volition evident among the vast majority of people, to an extent that a very narrow, parochial viewpoint seemed to be the norm - and was pronounced enough to reveal itself even amongst those few people who did actually collect a passport and move out of the country on occasion. Worse, no one seemed to be aware that they had it. They confused second-hand input relayed via (an incredibly bad) media with experiential knowledge of life outside that life defined by the narrow parameters placed on them geo-politically, to the extent that they confused wilful rejection of one parameter (such as embracing an American version of an Eastern religion) with actually getting out from within those parameters at all. It was easy in the states to be labelled eccentric or "off the wall" - all too easy, I found.

So my question (actually three questions) - to all who come to this site. Could the American slide into fundamentalism (and it extends beyond a purely religious interpretation at this stage) be simply the logical outcome of having a huge population effectively thinking parochially? Could the worst of its manifestations socially be diffused through the simple expediency of "getting out more"? Has the internet, which was presented as a panacea to just that collection of ills, actually simply accelerated the process by creating a community of people who communicate facelessly from within their nests and receive a diet of even more second-hand experiences instead of less?

It is a question that many non-US people discuss quite a lot when that country comes up as a topic, but not one high on the agenda where it matters most - at least to me it seemed that way.