R.P. Barr

Evangelical Error

With Rick Santorum leading the current charge, we are once again hearing choruses of “Don’t impose your values on me. I want to impose my values on you.” That sentiment is blatantly un-American.

Religious freedom means that each person may practice whatever his or her conscience dictates as long as it doesn’t violate the rights of others to do the same. Along the way, the elected representatives of the people have set some broad rules that all must obey so that society may have some order. Laws should be as value neutral as possible.

Before you get excited about what your neighbor is doing with his or her body, I would like for you to step outside some evening and look up. You will be seeing pretty much the same sky that was there a couple thousand years ago when Middle Easterners founded three of the world’s great religions. True, they didn’t see airplane lights or gleaming satellites, but the rest was there—and probably a little easier to see without modern pollution.

In those days, a man (or woman) could cover with his thumb any object he could see in the night sky. No wonder people then believed that this teensy planet was the center of the universe, and all the rest was of little consequence or concern to the Creator.

The books these ancients wrote were about what they could see—not about what God knew. They did not write about distant galaxies, planets or moons. They did not even write about penguins, kangaroos, rainforests, viruses or electricity. God knew about all those things. The ancient holy books are splendid expressions of faith and excellent foundations for the religions that have grown around them, but they are not the works of God.

If you want to see what God wrote, look at the night sky, or a drop of water under a microscope. Every time an animal goes extinct due to man’s greed, we are committing an offence against that creature’s creator. Every time someone kills or abuses another in the name of God, it is blasphemy. If you would protect your soul, protect that which the Creator made.

Genesis 1:28 says that God gave the world, animals and plants, to man to subdue and rule—not to destroy. Personally, I find that and many other sections to be a little self-serving, but nowhere does it say that man can rip the tops off mountains to scoop out the minerals within, nature be damned.

Meanwhile, what fundamentalists everywhere should remember is that men can print thousands of books that are exactly the same. God gave each person a mind that was exquisitely unique. Which do you suppose He would want us to respect more?

Why Juan Williams should have been fired

Juan Williams was reportedly fired by National Public Radio for saying that people on airplanes dressed in Muslim garb made him nervous about their intentions.  Both conservatives and liberal commentators have condemned NPR.  I wonder if they would be so quick to attack if Williams had been a white reporter who said that groups of young black men on street corners made him fearful?  What would happen to such a reporter’s credibility?

If we allow Williams to speak of his irrational fears, then he should still have been fired for not learning anything as a reporter.  Think back on all the photographs you have seen of Muslim  terrorists: the 9/11 crew, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomber, etc.  Did any of them wear long robes or bin-Laden beards or akaru (the head scarf with the rope around it)?  Of course not.  --Well, I'll concede a scruffy beard on Richard Reid, but even with it, he looked more goofy than threatening.

Terrorists want to blend in so they can get closer to their targets.   They do not want to draw attention to themselves.  Terrorists look more like Williams, or you, or me or an Army doctor.

 But, Williams is afraid of robes and beards.  He has learned nothing.  Reporters should be fired for stupidity.

9/11 and the future of Islam

Today marks not only the ninth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, but also Eid ul-Ftir, which is the biggest holiday on the Islamic calendar.  Eid is a three-day celebration at the end of Ramadan when Muslims fast all day, every day for a month.  The holiday moves every year, sometimes it coincides with Christmas, sometimes with Easter, and at everyplace in between.  This year the holiday concludes on 9/11.  This is unfortunate, because it has forced many American mosques to cut back on their festivities out of fear that some non-Muslims would accuse them of celebrating the 2001 tragedy.

Despite George W. Bush’s repeated insistence at the time that Islam as a religion was not to blame for the attacks, he made the grievous—some would say calculated—error of treating the mass murder like an act of war.  Only nations can engage in war, and al-Qaeda did not have that standing,  The attack was a criminal act, and should have been labeled as such.  It was wrong to elevate a band of terrorists to nation-equivilance.  Now, here we are.

 With misunderstanding poisoning the air already, I thought this might be a good time to speculate on the future. 

 The first hard fact is that Muslim populations are growing.  Western populations are stabilizing or falling.  The amount of potable fresh water in the world is declining.  People who live in places that are historically dry are already migrating to places with more rainfall and fresh water resources--not to mention jobs and political freedom.

 The Middle East, the land of Arabs, Persians and Turks, was once the scientific center of the world.  There was also a vast Ottoman Empire the stretched from Caspian Sea to the Horn of Africa, from Hungary to Algeria.  Islam was embraced by people from China to Spain.  Then came the crusades, with the lesson that education is less important than religious solidarity and military might.  The empire deteriorated and the momentum of scientific achievement moved across the Mediterranean to Europe.

There are those in the Muslim world, al-Qaeda among them, who would like to see their empire rise again.  Waves of babies and immigrants will cause a number of changes, but they are not going to bring about a new empire to counterbalance the West.

 To create a pan-Islamic empire, first, Muslims have to stop killing each other.  In the old empire, everything was ruled by a Sultan who was also Caliph.  As sultan, he managed secular affairs, and as caliph, he was the leader of the faith.  With todays hardened sects, who would lead Islam? A Sunni or a Shiite or something else?  Until the warring parties can unite and declare that all Muslims are Muslims, there will not be an empire.

 They will also have to stop killing their women and their children.  Oppression of half the population is an incredible waste of human resources.  Independence of thought and action is not incompatible with Islam, but it is essential to modernization and the economic independence from the West. Education must be more secular than religious, including science, history and advanced mathmatics.  Muslims in the United States, Canada and Europe have proven that these goals can be achieved without destroying the faith.  Now, the Middle East must learn the same thing.

If these changes occur before the oil runs out, then a new Islamic empire can arise—if that’s what they really want.  Personally, I don’t see it happening.  Therefore, we had better learn to live together.

Manipulating tragedy for 5 minutes of fame

 Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.  - Albert Einstein

I’m sure that you’ve heard about the Florida pastor who is planning to burn copies of the Koran on September 11.  What does he hope to accomplish?

A nice little prayer and some discussion of the transitory nature of life might be appropriate.  Maybe a special collection for a memorial.  Let the congregation hold hands for a moment of silence.  That would be nice.  Book burning isn’t.

The pastor, whose name does not rate mentioning here, has said that it is time to stand up to Islam.

He obviously hasn’t done the math.  Of the billion and a half Muslims in the world, fewer than one percent are engaged in violence against the non-Muslim world.  But, this beanbag wants to offend all of them.

Muslims are very strong on symbolism.  They will not see this book burning as the act of a nobody clergyman and an insignificant gaggle of followers.  They will see it as a direct attack on their religion by the United States.  They have no experience with our Constitution, and firmly believe that President Obama could stop this outrage if he wanted.

Even if Islam were united and bent on our destruction, what is accomplished by burning their holiest of books.  Is that going to stop the next terrorist act?  Is al-Qaeda going to recoil and cry, “Oh, no!  If we attack them now they might burn more books!”

If I were to go to Florida and burn a stack of Bibles, I would be attract some unkind language, and a handful of spokesmen would call for my arrest, but in the end it would all blow over and a year from now no one would be talking about it.  The Middle East is not like the United States.  After this bonfire, the grandchildren of children not yet born will still be offended and someone will use this utterly stupid and pointless act as an excuse to blow something up.

Muslims are not communists, they will not see their faith as false and convert.  They will not be intimidated a little fire any more than we were by collapse of the twin towers.  Indeed, Muslim radicals look for any slight to react against.

Our best strategy is to win over as many people as we can, to make friends with as many as will let us.  We must also remember that as long as we are rich and powerful, we will be blamed for the evils of the world by every demogogue that comes down the pike.  Shout “death to America” and you get a crowd; shout “we want democratic reform” and go to prison.   That is reality in most Muslim countries.  Winning hearts and minds is slow and tedious, but it works.  Desecrating holy books only makes a bad situation worse.

Besides, it’s stupid--and not very Christian.

Waiting for Reality to Blink

I am old enough to remember a time when liberals were pie-in-the-sky delusional and conservatives staunch realists.  Remember world peace and flower power versus stay-in-school and the work ethic.  The positions on the reality scale have now reversed.  Who’d have thunk it?

One example is from NPR [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129305280], a little microcosm of the larger economy.  Modoc County, California has only one hospital, and it is on economic life support.  If the hospital doesn’t get an infusion of cash, it may have to close its doors.  The nearest alternative is hours away—that's in the summer time when the roads are clear.  There are a number of elderly in the area who depend on the hospital for their very survival.  In addition, the hospital is the largest employer in the county.  If it closes, so will a lot of other things.  Property values will fall, and the consequent further drop in county revenues will cause other cutbacks to services.  The only apparent solution is a property tax increase to save the hospital.  It is opposed by at least one man who is funding the anti-tax-increase movement.  The problem with preaching fiscal responsibilty at this point is that there may be no-one left to hear the lesson.  What's more important, your point or your life?

There is a similar psychology at work regarding Islamic mosques.  The anti-mosque legion in New York does not want a place where Moslems can peacefully gather and engage in recreational activities as well as sometimes pray.  Remember a few months ago when these same people (probably), did not want to try and punish Muslem terrorists in lower Manhatten either?  And, if a few blocks from the place where New Yorkers cannot even erect a memorial in nine years time, is too close, then what is the reason for objecting to a mosque in Tennessee where they allow church members to handle poisonous snakes?  Or in California where enemas are given for entertainment and getting high passes for a religious experience?

This anti-Islamic sentiment is not only bigoted, it is delusional and dangerous.  

Look at the guy who went around stabbing and slashing African-Americans (and a few who resembled African-Americans).  We know what kind of person does that.  We know the profile.  --Except this guy was from Israel.  Okay, new profile.  We've read about the settlers who attack Palestinian children on their way to school.  He just couldn’t find any Palestinians.  -–Wait a minute, he was an Israeli Arab, not a Jew.  That’s easier.  We know about Hamas and that bunch.  Maybe he was trying to start a race war in the U.S.  --Except that he wasn’t Moslem.  He was an Israeli Arab Christian.  Stuff that in your profile and smoke it.

Then there were the killers who escaped from prison in Arizona.  A nasty trio, illegal immigrants from south of the border, right?  Nope.  Good ol’ American white boys.

 9/11 was a bad thing, but in spite of the horrific death toll, it was only one attack.  We lose more Americans to drunk drivers on a regular basis.  And, most Moslems don’t drink.

 Our economy is in the crapper thanks to a bunch of mostly white Christians and Jews who pushed us off a cliff for a quick profit.  You've got to look at who your real enemies are.

 There are a couple million Moslems in the United States, and they are nearly all here legally, unlike the devout Roman Catholics that are flocking over the border.  The other thing about American Moslems is that they are not trying to kill us.  Even with a few radicalized young men, they are not nearly as dangerous as the ethnic organized crime groups who are also nearly exclusively Christian.

 Worldwide, there are 1.5 billion Moslems who may not like us very much—although many do—but are not trying to kill us.  A handful of them are using their religion to manipulate the ignorant.  They are practicing the lessons of Machiavelli.  If you are unhappy with your lot in life, blame the other, the outsider.  People will put up with the failures of their leaders if they feel threatened.

 In this country, there are some who have read The Prince, but I see a stronger influence by a more modern political thinker: Joseph Goebbels who was proponent and perfector of the “big lie.”  In case you’ve forgotten, the theory was that if you tell a big lie boldly enough and often enough, the masses will come to believe it.  Call a social liberal both a Nazi and a communist; say that he is foreign born despite all evidence to the contrary, and that he is a Moslem only a year or two after attacking him for going to his choice of churches—say those things often enough and loud enough and they will gain traction.  Goebblels would be so proud.

Mark 12:17

The other day, I found a copy of the Washington Examiner and had a few minutes, so I flipped through it.  For those of you who live outside the Capitol Region, there are two free newspapers available in sidewalk boxes near most metro stations and on the sidewalks of D.C.  Actually, there are more than two, but the others are specialized and these are general news newspapers.  The Washington Post prints one of them, and the Washington Times prints the Examiner.  The Times was originally part of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s empire.  Both the Times and the Examiner have a decidedly conservative bent. 

 In this issue, there was the first of a three-part series on “Obamacare” by Sally Pipes.   The headline shouted, “Obamacare Will Cost You Your Retirement.”  Since I am pseudo-retired myself, I thought that I had better read it.  Turns out that she wasn’t addressing me, and wasn’t really alarmed about retirement plans.  Ms. Pipes was upset because the tax rate was going to be raised on people who made more than $200,000 ($250,000 for families). Increasing the taxes they pay by as much as 2.35 per cent at the upper end of the scale.

Now, a family income of $250,000 is well over twice what I show on my joint return.  And, if someone were to offer me double my income in exchange for an agreement to pay an additional 2, 3 or even 5% in my tax rate, my only question would be: where do I sign up?  I know people who live without complaint, if not without worry, on half of what I make.  Ask them if they would take a tax increase along with a  quarter of a million dollars annually.  I do not share Ms. Pipes’ distress.

 Last week, the Congress voted down a bill that would have provided relief for medical bills experienced by the 9/11 first responders.  The reason for the defeat was that Republicans did not want to pay for it by closing a tax loophole for foreign corporations that made money in the U.S. 

 The very word “tax” seems to set off alarm bells among the political right.  Abortion is old hat.  We can’t provide medical care for children because it might increase taxes.  We can’t protect the environment.  We can’t provide for the elderly.

The military, on the other hand, is a worthwhile expense.  We shouldn’t question the billions that are not accounted for in Iraq.  We shouldn’t enforce the law on military contractors who rape American coworkers overseas, or murder foreign civilians.  Military waste—whether monetary or human--is patriotic.

 The United States has reputation for fairness.  Among all the countries of the world, this one was founded not on ethnicity, but on ideals, on principles of law and equality.  Anyone from anywhere can become a citizen here—if they follow the rules.  The glory that is—or was—the American middle class was due to the triumph of labor unions and fair labor laws.  A worker could make a decent living here.

But, in the past few years, this country has lost its way.  We’ve been confused by terrorism, subverted by greed, and corrupted by religions that have abandoned their origins.

 Christianity is nominally the dominant faith.  How often do religious spokespersons cite the lesson of dividing the bread and fish of a few to feed the multitudes?  Or the lesson on taxes, which was to render unto Caesar, that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s?  You can't take it with you.

 A handful of American billionaires seems to have remembered that bit about a rich man having less chance of getting into heaven than a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle.  Of course they could have reduced their wealth by charging less for their products, or foregone moving their operations offshore.  But, taking the good where I find it, I feel a little better about typing this on Microsoft Word.

Explaining God to the Clerics

I have been tempted to write a song called, “You’re so Vain, You Probably Think This Earthquake’s About You,” but the title is too long.  The point is that I am repeatedly depressed by modern clergy who preach the superstitions of cave men.

 Islam certainly does not have a corner on this practice.  Look at the excruciating rudeness of the Christian sect that demonstrates at the funerals of fallen servicemen claiming the deceased were killed because of their sins.  If anyone deserves to be shot…  Not that I’m advocating violence.  But, I digress.

The news story at hand [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8631775.stm] comes from Iran, where a senior cleric is blaming earthquakes on women’s clothing choices.  Provocative dress, he says, angers Allah. 

 Just this once, I want to explain that God made women the way they are.  God made men’s desire for women as well.  We may not be able to control how we feel, but how men behave is wholly within their own control.  If not, they should be institutionalized.  Being a man is about self-control if nothing else.  Religious men have been fighting their own natures and blaming women for centuries.  It’s stupid.  Grow up.

 Meanwhile, the big three religions with Middle East origins all agree that there is only one God, a God who made all of us the way He wanted us to be.  If God is the father, then He has no favorite children—or else he is a bad father.  Do you want to tell him?

 Of course when we were on the Creator’s drawing board, He was envisioning hunter-gatherers who would congregate in small, scattered groups.  If a natural disaster arrived, humans could throw their belongings in a sack and walk away.  Casualties were small.  People only owned the land under their own feet, and relocation was no problem.  Unfortunately, we didn’t learn the lesson of small numbers and fluid boundaries.  We were given everything we needed for our happiness, and what we’ve done with it is our own punishment.  God doesn’t have to smite us for that.

 If any human behavior is causing the Almighty to make the earth quake or the atmosphere storm, it must be religious fundamentalists who use God’s name to preach bias and hate for their brothers and sisters who worship or behave differently.  God gave us the choices of cooperation or conflict, which do you suppose He prefers? 

 I offer this proof of my thesis.  In all of recorded history, hate and warfare have not had any discernable, favorable effect on natural disasters.  Neither have the raising or lowering of hemlines. We should try love and see what happens.

Runway Ruckus

A viral email was sent to me this week.  The first-person account was unsigned and left the impression that the forwarder was the author.  At first glance, it seemed like a real account of an airline flight cancelled as a result of extremists’ bad behavior.

 As someone who used to fly regularly, bad behavior on an airplane does not surprise me.  Before getting worked up over the offensive passengers, I read the story again.

 Now, the initial facts checked out.  AirTran has a flight 297 going from Atlanta to Houston.  Fox News is cited, but their online archives do not have the story of a flight cancelled on November 17, 2009.  That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  However, since the story in the email is much better than the one that Fox is purported to have broadcast—and knowing the kind of stories that Fox likes to run with--the first red flag is that the author did not tip Fox to the “real” story.

 The author says that he was flying first class.  AirTran does not offer first class seating.  The 717 that flies from Atlanta to Houston does have 12 business class seats in the front of the cabin. 

 Boarding appears to be from a door in the front.  He says that 11 Muslim men “in full attire” boarded the plane.  I wonder what that means.  The Muslim-Americans that I know dress like everybody else.  And since the Islamic world stretches from Indonesia and the Phillippines across Southern and Central Asia to the Middle East and half-way down Africa the dress varies widely.  Within all of these countries are non-Muslims who dress pretty much the same as the Muslims.  The use of a religious adjective to describe appearance instead of an ethnic one made me think that the writer had an agenda.

 The author in his business class seat claims that two of the eleven sat in his section.  Really, when you fly, do you count the people who board the plane in groups?  It takes all kinds. 

 Anyway, as the plane began to taxi, one of the “fully attired” people began talking on his cell phone in Arabic to another one of the group who was back in coach.  Can you distinguish Arabic from Farsi, or from Hebrew or Turkish or--  ?  Well, let’s give the author this one.  But, how did he know who the caller was talking to.  The author is belted into his seat.  He knows that his neighbor is talking, but how does he know what’s going on in coach?

 When the flight attendent told the cell phone caller to stop while the plane was taking off, she was ignored.  If these men were foreign visitors from the Middle East—possibly going to Houston to conduct oil business—that would explain the non-English conversation.  Although the attitude is not true of every Middle Eastern male, many do not recognize that women can be in a position of authority over them.  Such men typically ignore female police, Customs, and flight attendents.

 Apparently another female flight attendent in the rear of the cabin was also having trouble with a man on a cell phone.  And, two others from the “fully attired” group were viewing porn “they had taped the night before.”  In 2009, does anybody “tape” anything?  And, how chummy did our author get with these guys to find out when they recorded it?  Anyway, this behavior alarmed the author because he had “studied” and knew that Muslims are only allowed to look at porn or go to a strip club on the night befoe a jihad.  I only read the Koran once and must have missed that chapter.  However, I have traveled abroad quite a bit, and if the author is correct, there are Middle Eastern men all over Europe preparing for jihad several nights a week.

 The porn vieewers also ignored the flight attendent telling them to turn off their electronic device.  The whole group stood up to shout down these presumptuous women.  The author and a larger Texan pushed the first porn-viewer back toward his seat.  Then, the doors opened and the passengers were joined by 3 TSA agents and 4 police officers.  The 11 unruly passengers were taken from the plane.  So was their luggage.

 A few minutes later, the 11 were reboarded.  This appalled all who were involved in the fracas. 

 The failure to obey instructions by a flight crew is a federal crime.  If this account is true, then my first assumption is that they had diplomatic immunity.  There could be other reasons, but there's not enough information to know.

 The offended flight crew and passengers got off the plane, and the flight was cancelled.  The foreign visitors no doubt learned something about getting along in the U.S.

 The author sees the whole thing as a dry run for a terrorist attack.  It sounds to me more like a clash of cultures, and one that could have been handled better by the flight crew.

 Terrorists want to blend in, not stand out.  Confrontation is not a terrorist’s choice of strategy.  Even a suicide bomber tries to conform to those around him until the moment of detonation.  Arrousing his targets only makes the job harder.  Like the 9/11 hijackers, anyone who wants to be a terrorist in this country will wear typical American clothes and be clean shaven.  Do you remember the female suicide bomber in Israel a couple years ago who wore a skirt and makeup for the first time when she went on her mission?

 We are at war.  We need to think more and panic less.  

Science fare

There are times when events seem to cluster around a given issue.  Or maybe we are more attuned to specific subjects at different times.  Whatever the cosmic or psychological reason, the stars seem to be aligning over global warming.

We have the meeting in Copenhagen this week.  The recent Congressional hearings.  The salt trade in Mali.   –The what in where?

According to the BBC, in what is probably the world’s oldest continual enterprise, the Tuareg tribesmen in the Sahara Desert of Mali break up slabs of salt in an ancient lake bed and haul these slabs by camel caravan some 1,400 kilometers to Timbuktu where it is sold.  This tradition is now endangered—and improved—by global warming.  If we assume that burning fossil fuels is a reason for the rapidly warming atmosphere, then we should say that hauling materials with pack animals is a good thing.  Except that the changing climate of the Sahara means even less rainfall, and more stress on the camels.  The Tuareg have been forced to start using trucks.  In a few short years, half the salt trade has shifted to these diesel-guzzling machines.  The trucks, meanwhile, can haul more salt than the camels and do it faster.  The trip that took 45 days by caravan now takes 10.  The faster delivery times means that the economics of selling the salt has shifted from a buyers’ to a sellers’ market.  The salt miners have built houses for themselves, and improved their lives.

Isn’t the story of the Tuaregs the dilemma that the world is facing?  Do we tell the Tuaregs that we will not reduce smokestack pollutants unless they go back to camel caravans?

There was also the conveniently timed story that suggested some scientists were selective in reporting the results of global warming studies.  Hello?  The global warming critics ignore thousands of scientific studies to trumpet the few anomalies that support their position.  Now, I am not a scientist, but I know that making a statement about the physical world doesn’t make it true, and cheating—if that is what it was—doesn’t make it false.

Does Gregor Mendel’s name ring a bell.  He is the father of genetics.  His experiments proved how dominant and recessive traits are passed along through generations and how they express themselves.  He was totally right.  And, he cheated when he wrote his reports.  We know this because every experiment supposedly resulted in exactly the right number of dominant and recessive traits displayed in the offspring.  It was like flipping a coin a hundred times and getting exactly fifty heads and fifty tails.  The chances are 50-50, but it will never turn out that way—except in Mendel’s notebooks.

The critics however, see a State of Fear –style conspiracy.   I just finished the Michael Crichton book.  The one that will never be made into a movie.  It’s about a plot by conservation organizations to create global chaos to support their unfounded global warming theories. 

I admire Crichton as a writer, but his credentials as a prophet are not so good.  He has written about robots running amuck in a theme park, a pandemic from outer space, cloned dinosaurs, time travel, killer apes guarding a diamond mine, Japanese businessmen taking over the U.S. and so forth.  Good reads all, but not reality.

He finished State of Fear with an afterward saying that he was not denying global warming, but he didn’t see the science as being clear, and we shouldn’t do anything until it was.

New York’s World Trade Center was composed of several buildings.  The famous towers were number One and Two.  Facing the side of One WTC was a much lower building, Six WTC housed the U.S. Custom House for New York.  When the first airplane struck tower One, the vibrations from the impact were felt in Six.  The Regional Director did not know that an airplane had struck the building across from him, he just knew that his building had never shaken before, so he ordered an evacuation.

Even after the second plane had hit tower Two, there was no understanding that the buildings would come crashing down.  But, when they did, they destroyed the other five building in the complex.

The science of just how the collapse occurred is still being studied, but no-one died in number Six because they didn’t wait.

Back in the days before the public knew that smoking caused cancer and heart disease, children were told not to smoke.  It was considered to be a filthy habit.  All the movies portrayed smoking as either glamorous or just a normal part of life.  Those who abstained, did it without the science.

Meanwhile, those who deny global warming are largely financed by the industries that will have to make changes if the world tightens up on greenhouse gases.  It’s like putting the fox on a committee to study chicken disappearances.

 Where is it written that we should get everything we want regardless of who suffers later?  We need to do what we can to reduce or postpone impending bad events.  That is what good people do.  God is going to be very cross with the rest.

Quote: The Ideal Religious Fanatic

Speaking of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams—the subject of her recent book, The Wordy Shipmates--on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, author Sarah Vowell said:

 "He’s the sort of ideal religious fanatic.  He believed that everyone who disagreed with him over his puritan views were going to burn eternally in Hell.  And, he thought that was punishment enough, and so, on earth, we could all live together….I thought if there were more religious fanatics like that nowadays, there might be fewer car bombs.”