As I have said, I am an atheist, meaning I have no religion. Doesn’t stop me from talking about them, though.
Some of you may have noticed that Egypt has gone ass-over-teakettle. The Egyptian government has shut down the Internet, and has detained Mohammed-El-Baradei, mostly known to you as a man in charge of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who works very hard to make sure that the allotted number of fool countries dumb enough to have them don’t make more or give them to other fool countries. He’s Egyptian, and thought to be the silent leader of the coup against Hosni Mubarak. I am happy about this; good riddance to Mr. Mubarak, who sure ain’t no Anwar Sadat.
Enough of this, I am probably missing details, and half of that is on purpose. My point is that a lot of Americans are running around scared as if Al-Qaeda itself was going to become a political party. This is utter nonsense, and there is no “Mr. Base” running that party if it existed.
Look. Islam just wants some peace and quiet. This may sound strange to some, but here’s an example of a conversation between a Muslim and his god:
Muslim: I would like to kill that man for looking at my daughter!
Allah: I will kill you for eternity if you even touch him.
Muslim: Perhaps I have overreacted. I am so glad you are a god of mercy right now. Thank you. I hope it is prayer time in the next hour. May I cry until then?
That’s it. Basically, if you have an impure thought and Allah knows about it, which he does, you go to hell unless you pray for mercy. He’s the Old Testament Jehovah, with a more refined sense of fairness. Allah warns; Jehovah, well, he prefers to just wreck things until he is happy. Brought to grand metaphor level, it probably explains a lot of ancient history. Here’s the Christians:
Christian: God told me to burn your town down.
God: I did no such thing.
Helpless Subjugate: Can we not live in peace together?
Christian: My god says you cannot be saved.
God: Come on now! This is how rumors start! Shut up!
Allah: I am going to kill this Christian for eternity.
Or, we can do this with the Jews too:
Jew: My temple! Says so right here!
Arab: See that thing in the basement? That was your temple.
Jew: I am destined to own it!
Arab: Don’t let me come back here and find that you messed with it, because my god will kill me if I let that happen. What will yours do to you?
Jew: Mine will bring about the end of the world!
Arab: Yeah. Well, mine will bring it back and then send me to hell anyway. You get heaven. I get hell. Who has more to lose here?
So, the point of all of this silly dialogue is that we misunderstand greatly the intentions of a man simply because we look at his religious faith. I have one job as an atheist-butt out of religious conversations. Instead, I am stuck here, making my own.