Jay, we can try, but it's impossible not to bring in religion AND politics when discussing the destruction of a RELIGIOUS edifice within a given sociopolitical context. I respect your free will to not believe, and I appreciate that you're not pushing your atheism on others, but the fact remains that a number of us here are believers, even orthodox Catholics, such as yours truly; thus, we cannot under any circumstance ignore the prime purpose Notre Dame exists. Others can treat it as a museum or landmark if they want, but as, ironically, an atheist writer put it, "no amount of scepticism is going to legislate the truth out of existence".
Looking at Notre Dame from a purely art appreciation perspective is akin to buying a magnificent pipe just to look at it and never loading it with tobacco and firing it up. Yes, there are many who do just this: but the vast majority of pipers will never refuse to acknowledge that a pipe's raison d'etre is the smoking of tobacco, not sitting pretty in a glass case.
