Today's thoughts:

Ok, this is a quick distillation of the THREE HOUR DISCUSSION I've just had with a couple of girly friends when I crashed their girls' night. We'd argued, loudly and drunkenly, for hours about whether ultimately "religion poisons everything".

In the end, everyone except me and Grace bailed on the discussion (only sheer bloody-mindedness kept me going) but we managed to boil down our cases to a basic two-premise logical argument. At that point, we realised we pretty much agreed.

My argument:
P1. There is an aspect of the human psyche which means that invariably people will inflict/proselytise their beliefs onto others
P2. The infliction of belief on others is a fundamental cause of human suffering
C. The holding of belief is a fundamental cause of human suffering (ie. poisons everything)

It turned out that Grace only disagreed with my first premise, in that she didn't believe INVARIABLY beliefs are inflicted on others. I could have kept arguing but I think it was a time for hugs and reconciliation.

I'm happy :)