Believing Your Beliefs?

There is an interesting article at Fox News today about a survey showing that many Americans aren't actually buying everything their preachers and their bibles are selling.

Americans: My Faith Isn't the Only Way to Heaven

Conciliable Use of Religion

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is endeavoring to encourage the appropriate use of religious faith to benefit mankind. In a recent address, he had some interesting things to say as he warned against extremism:

Paraphrased: Virtually every religion is tainted by extremism. Extremists are those who see their faith as a means of excluding the other person who does not share it. Religious faiths need to be protected from the influence of extremists on one hand and militant secularists, who would exclude all religious influence, on the other.

News articles here:
Catholic World News
Reuters
The Guardian

From the Guardian article:
"He said having a faith and believing it to be the truth is fine, but not when it looks down upon those of other faiths or none - where God becomes partisan and not universal and is defined by who he is against rather than the universal values we all share. Blair spoke about how religion can be a force for good and was very conscious, if left to extremists, of how it can be a force for wrong."