Do not,,,

...believe in anything because you have heard it;
...believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many;
...believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books;
...believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders;
...believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis,
when you find that anything agrees with reason, and
is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.
-Buddha

I found the above at KniftyRed's blog on blogger the other day, a day or two after DS#2 confided the reason why he didn't want to go to church any more. Talk about syncronicity in action! It seems that the pastor there is teaching that global warming is a myth and that women should be seen and not heard, etc. Not-so-DH and I go to separate church/temple because I believe that every person carries the truth of light and darkess inside them, and to discover it fully requires a deep conviction that you need to, not because somebody told you that you could be saved by doing-or believing-certain things. The reason I go to a buddhist temple is because of the compassion principle, as I call it. To nourish and entertain and cultivate compassion for every living thing on this planet is the guiding principle of every religion I have ever studied, but buddhism is the only one that teaches this principle everyday, with no strings attached. I'll probably start an uproar with this, but it seems to me that everytime somebody tells me that I should look outside of my self for salvation and validation of such, I run in the other direction, because, to me, salvation is something that was included in the matrix of our souls by whichever gods you believe in and needs to be discovered inside us. It can't be handed to us after uttering certain words or doing certain deeds or somebody getting in my face screaming about whatever.
I taught both of our boys to question authority-look at where the information is coming from, the context of the information and who the deliverer is; and that if the fit is not for you, to walk away. Just walk away. The problem is that DS#2 is in trouble with the local authorities for some pretty standard teenaged juvenile stuff, and as I see it: dad's reaction is to drag the boy to church to be saved and to mend the error of his ways. Meanwhile, in reaction to the style and content of preaching at church the boy wants to walk away from the flow of information he doesn't believe suits.

Sometimes, compassion is a hard path to follow and an even harder one to teach.

ps-for what it's worth, I am an envrionmental studies major and the jobs I have been interviewing for have been changing precisly because of global warming! Besides, women belong in the House AND the Senate!