You get articles like this:

Recall that only fifty years ago smoking was a high status activity and it was considered rude to ask somebody to stop smoking in one's presence. Today we've learned that we shouldn't make the mistake of trying to prohibit smoking altogether, and so we still have plenty of cigarettes and smokers, but we have certainly contained the noxious aspects within quite acceptable boundaries.  Smoking is no longer cool, and the day will come when religion is, first, a take-it-or-leave-it choice, and later: no longer cool-except in its socially valuable forms, where it will be one type of allegiance among many. Will those descendant institutions still be religions?  Or will religions have thereby morphed themselves into extinction?  It all depends on what you think the key or defining elements of religion are. Are dinosaurs extinct, or do their lineages live on as birds?
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The religious fervor of today is a last, desperate attempt by our generation to block the eyes and ears of the coming generations, and it isn't working. For every well-publicized victory-the inundation of the Bush administration with evangelicals, the growing number of home schoolers in the USA, the rise of radical Islam, the much exaggerated "rebound" of religion in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to take the most obvious cases-there are many less dramatic defeats, as young people quietly walk away from the faith of their parents and grandparents.

I especially was shocked by the attachment of home schooling to religion.  As if all homeschoolers are Bible thumpers who are trying to shield their children from the perceived evils of the world.  Perhaps some don't like the state of the education system today and how poorly it actually educates children, and aren't even that religious.  Perhaps some think that parents ought to have more of a say in the upbringing of their own children than teachers.  Go figure.

Of course the homeschooling mention was minor compared to the rest of the article, which has decided to paint with broad brushstrokes, and label anyone who is religious as a fanatic.  The irony is that the belief in this universal religious fanaticism is fanatical in and of itself.  Most religious people are good, moral people, who look to something higher than themselves to guide them in their daily lives.  Yeah... how terrible is that?

Anyone who is scornful of people who use that moral compass receives nothing but pity from me.  Whether you choose to live that life or not, those who do generally don't deserve your attacks, and likewise condemn the very fanatics you hate, because they do as much disservice to their life as they do yours.

Via Asymmetrical Information.