In my Fathers house are many mansions.

I have been making the argument for years that if various religious groups had the courage (and the decency) to wait until their children were 25 years of age before indoctrinating them into religion; it would die on the vine for lack of believers. No 25 year old who has not been indoctrinated by delusional believers would buy into a belief system that ordinarily could be held only by lunatics.

“In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”  John 14:2

Imagine if a sadistic torturer has promised you everlasting life and never ending bliss if you accept his offer of living in one of his mansions; while at the same time he is torturing in the basement the very same people you once loved.  And what if their greatest sin was being unable to make themselves believe something they disbelieve.  Could you still, in good conscience, accept his invitation? Could you live there forever, knowing that some of the people are in the basement suffering unimaginable torture while you are experiencing unimaginable bliss? 

Would you suck up to him and tell him he’s awesome and work yourself up into loving him? Would you make excuses for him and tell yourself he just must have his reasons? Would you defend him? Would you convince yourself he is the epitome of justice itself? Would you blame the people he tortures? Could you be truly happy there?

Most Christians are unaware that 67% of our planet’s population  reject the notion Jesus is their savior.  At this very moment the population is 7.2 billion. If the bible is true (no cherry picking allowed) that means four billion, 824 million, of us alive and breathing now are headed for eternal punishment. And that doesn’t include those who have already died and those yet to be born.

It’s gonna take a lot of mansions. And the basement will need to have twice as much room as the upper floors. No problem. We all know that Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild was a good carpenter. 

Religion and Intelligence... Not Necessarily Incompatible

An old, but relevant article. But the author misleads us when he states: " Indeed it turns out that there is statistical evidence to flesh out the proposition that the more educated or intelligent one is, the less religious one is." 

Many religious people I know are highly intelligent.   Belief is something that is instilled in children before their brains have developed enough for critical thinking. Scientists once thought that our brains were fully developed by the age of 17. Recent studies have determined that they actually are not fully developed until we are as old as 27.

I have written about this (see my earlier posting) on my blog, charliesitzes.blogspot.com "An Honest Search For Truth." The reason we believe what we believe has nothing to do with truth. What it has to do with is who are parents were. As I point out, if the child of a Baptist mother was accidentally switched at birth with the child of a Muslim mother, each child would grow up convinced the other was going straight to hell.

Imagine if instead of telling our children what to think, we taught them how to think. When they reach the age of 25 we tell them about religion and offer them a choice. Dead men walking, flying white horses with wings, a wafer actually (not symbolically...actually) being the body of a long dead religious zealot, that Jesus will return to Jackson County, Missouri..... all of it. Oh and don't forget to tell them about the Hindu god, Ram, who enlisted the help of an army of devoted monkeys to build a 28 mile long land bridge to rescue his princess from an evil king. If you tell your 25 year old that they are now free to choose any god they want, which one do you think they would choose?

Don't forget to mention to them that if they intend to go into politics, they will be REQUIRED to adopt one of these gods if they are to have any hope of ever winning an election.

So, here's the article which a friend and fellow non-believer sent me today.

January 27, 2008

“Don’t pray in my school and I won’t think in your church.”

The misleading simplicity of this bumper-sticker size witticism aside, I think it contains a pretty accurate summation of my views on the intellectual laziness of the religious. Indeed it turns out that there is statistical evidence to flesh out the proposition that the more educated or intelligent one is, the less religious one is.[1]

Apparently there is also evidence that shows as few as 1 in 12 children escape the religious views of their parents in the cases of children with a secure emotional attachment to their parents.[2]

In this day and age there is no excuse for such laziness. For the greatest minds of the Christian age, Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus and so on, there was an excuse; besides the danger of being denied access to learning or even being executed, the power of the Church permeated all aspects of life. Scientific methods of analysis didn’t exist. That is not the case today.

To believe in God is not an indefensible proposition; to believe in a specific religious doctrine is indefensible. Because Christianity is the most ubiquitous religion in Western Europe, it is the one I know most about but it is by no means the only religion open to serious charge of intellectual laziness. No less so the superstitions which currently pervade our society, despite arguments to the contrary.[3]

The casual acceptance of this laziness, or the denial that laziness exists in the first place, irritates me, as it did in some of these comments on Fruits of Our Labour.[4]

A burden of proof now lies on me to demonstrate that belief in Christianity is intellectual laziness, as that is the proposition which underlines this article. I do not view that as a difficult task. I need only mention a few things to begin with; the massive discrepancies between the Gospels, the patently made up facts surrounding Jesus’ genealogy and the strong current of censorship that accompanies all the writings of the Early Christian fathers.

Most Christians haven’t considered these things. Those that have do not have an answer, though if you wish to see truculence in the face of overwhelming evidence, I suggest looking up virtually any subject on the Catholic Encyclopaedia. These things certainly aren’t mentioned in religious class in school – even in non-faith schools. In faith schools can you imagine how much worse it is?

Even those schools which don’t directly indoctrinate children into a specific religion, the non-specific ethic that pervades things like morning Assembly is generally religious. In many schools it is an attempt to generalise so that all religions feel included – but it still harks back to religious, spiritual reasons for why certain things should be true.

In wider society we can see the effects this has. In the US, millions of Americans are hoodwinked by religious conmen who make hundreds of millions of dollars from people who don’t understand evolution and react against it out of some ‘common sense’ notions which could and should be challenged by the rest of us.

In Britain, we’re conned into respecting the fact that parents, some consciously, some out of the belief that faith schools get better results, seek to indoctrinate their children into their own way of life by ensuring that this is all the children are exposed to. In the US, this is a condition which the Supreme Court has upheld as justified under the Constitution (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 1972).

The ultimate effect is to encourage, to propagate a matching intellectual laziness. Faith, as a rule, is one of those matters which goes largely unquestioned except by an extreme minority. Even the majority of atheists and agnostics who, according to studies on the decline of religion in the UK, make up a sizable chunk of society, let it pass unchallenged.

Faith is widely seen as something to be respected than something which should be ridiculed – as intellectual laziness and an obstinate unwillingness to scientifically engage with evidence. Plenty of ‘the faithful’ attempt to equate atheism with another religion at this point, and suggest that teaching secularism would in effect be no different to what we attack organised religion for.

I have answered this comprehensively elsewhere.[5]

Ultimately what this line of reasoning fails to acknowledge is that most secularists don’t care what opinions people hold and don’t resent difference and discussion. What secularists do care about is denying an institutional stranglehold upon learning, and upon teaching the methods of critical and independent thought – each of which challenge faith.

In conclusion, though one person who jumped into this argument might casually attempt to put rational thought on a par with emotion, I disagree.[6] Religion and emotional attachments to certain views are indefensible in the face of rational, scientific analysis. The two can be in accord, but where they are not, one must triumph.

If we choose religion and emotion, then we become the subjectivists and surrender ourselves to Nietzsche’s concept of the superman who can free himself from objective conditions. We become our darker selves.

Are Believers Less Intelligent?

It’s tempting to accuse believers of being less intelligent than non-believers.  Atheists throw that accusation around quite a bit and nothing could be farther from the truth.

Here is what is really going on and it has nothing to do with lack of intelligence.

As a species we have evolved with a trait called confirmation bias. This simply means that we try to confirm what we already believe. In order to pull this off our brains require us to discount evidence that runs counter to our beliefs and a strong bias for evidence that proves us right.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a believer prays for a sick friend to get well. If the friend actually gets better, the believer sees that as evidence that prayer helps heal the sick. On the other hand, if the patient does not get better or in fact gets worse, that evidence is ignored. In other words we tend to keep the “yes” vote and ignore the “no” vote.  We tally our wins and ignore our losses.

We have also evolved so that as children, we will believe anything adults tell us. Go back a few millennia and it’s easy to see how that came about.  Children who did not believe their parents when they were told that crocodiles would eat them if they swam in a particular place in a river were eaten by crocodiles and quickly removed from the gene pool, as well as children who did not believe their parents who told them not to eat a particular red berry because it was poisoned.

When children are told by adults that a super-natural celestial dictator in the sky is watching their every move and reading their every thought, they not only will believe it, but spend the rest of their lives looking for confirmation of their beliefs.

This is why children of Muslims will grow into adults thinking Mahomet rode a white horse to heaven and back and that Jesus in most definitely not their ticket to heaven.  Children of Christians will grow up to believe that virgins get pregnant, that 10 million species of animals really did fit in a boat 500 feet long and that it rained six feet per hour (feet, not inches) for 40 days and nights. And of course children of Mormons will believe that the con man Joseph Smith really did dig up those golden plates.

And this is why, stuffing all that rubbish into the brains of innocent children before they have attained critical thinking skills should be a crime punishable by imprisonment.

charliesitzes.blogspot.com

P.S. Anyone notice that the pope, the head of 1.2 billion Catholics set a special day aside each year to pray for peace?  Anyone ever notice how his prayers have utterly and miserably failed?

Is God Throwing Rocks?

This morning when I read about the meteorite, no bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, that entered the Russian atmosphere a few hundred miles east of Moscow, it was a sobering reminder of just how fragile our lives are on this small blue planet.

Compared to the size of the earth, the meteorite was only a speck of dust, yet it caused hundreds of injuries and millions in damage from the shock wave.

Our species, arrogant as it is, nevertheless is vulnerable to extinction at any time by any one of the billions of these things caroming around within our very own solar system. We had a near miss by one named Asteroid 2012 DA14, just today, Feb 15th 2013. (I prefer to call it a near hit) It was much larger and if it had impacted on land would have caused total destruction of an area of over half a million acres. If Asteroid 2012 DA14 had crashed into the sea, (a more likely event)  tsunamis would have been more massive that the Dec. 2004 event that killed over 230,000 people and caused billions in property damage.

The really sad part is that Christians believe that we are the cause of all this. We are all worthless miserable sinners and if it were not for sin, none of this would happen.

How pathetic.

Why is this? How can the critical thinking of otherwise intelligent and kind people be so flawed?  Richard Russell, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher provides what I think it the best answer. (EMPHASIS IS MINE)

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men.

WHEN YOU HEAR PEOPLE IN CHURCH DEBASING THEMSELVES AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE MISERABLE SINNERS AND ALL THE REST OF IT, IT SEEMS CONTEMPTIBLE AND NOT WORTHY OF SELF-RESPECTING HUMAN BEINGS.

We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”

I would add to Russell's analysis that religion  is also nurtured by laziness. It takes effort to know while believing takes  no effort at all.

Grow Up!

This may sound like a strange way of putting it but I believe part of the problem with fundamentalists is that they are not puzzled enough. Unless we are profoundly puzzled by something, our minds are not open to inquiry. It all boils down to how important truth is to us. To get at truth, it’s necessary that we have the capability to entertain a thought or idea and still be capable of rejecting it. People who are genuinely interested in truth have this capability.  Scientists have this capability and we can thank them for most of the progress made in our short reign as sentient creatures on our small planet.

Of course fundamentalists are fond of reminding us that “science isn’t everything” or “logic isn’t everything.” This is true. In our human experience we have discovered music, art, comedy and other pursuits that don’t necessarily depend on logic and science.

But religion doesn’t fall within those examples. Religion is a belief. Belief, to be accepted must be consistent and not contradictory. Religions (Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Mormonism and Hinduism) are not only contradictory with each other, they are internally contradictory.  For example the Christian bible is chocked full of contradictions which a cursory internet search will quickly reveal.

 Jesus allegedly said (Matthew 18:3) “Except you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

I disagree. The last thing we need to do is become as little children. Little children will believe anything an adult chooses to implant in their innocent brains.  No, we should not become as little children. We should grow up.

Dumb and Dumber

“If humans  one day become extinct from catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of human life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves, but because we lacked the foresight.

The dominant species that replaces us in post- apocalyptic Earth, just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbial pea-brained dinosaurs.”  Neil deGrasse Tyson

I am extremely gratified to have someone as prominent as the great Neal deGrasse Tyson, state what I have been pointing out for several years; that pea brained dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 200 million years. They became extinct some 66 million years ago when an asteroid only eight miles across slammed into the ocean off the Yucatan Peninsula, causing darkness on the earth along with freezing temperatures and destroying most life.  

Meanwhile, we evolved into our present state a mere 200,000 years ago which means we have been here about 1/1000th the time that dinosaurs ruled the earth. Is there any reasonable thoughtful person, considering the way things are going now that thinks we will survive another 200 years, much less 200 thousand or 200 million. We constantly wage war on each other and much of it can be traced to religion. Look at what is going on in the Middle East where the majority is Muslim. Their population which stands at 1.6 billion is the fastest growing religion and the least educated.

When nations are ranked according to a human-development index, which measures such factors as life expectancy, literacy rates and educational attainment, the five highest ranked countries….Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands…are the least religious. (And also better educated)  Of the fifty countries at the bottom of the index, all are under-educated and intensely religious.

Whether atheism leads to positive social indicators are whether positive social indicators lead to atheism doesn’t matter. What matters is the idea that atheists are somehow less moral, honest or trustworthy has been dis-proven by study after study.  

Famous People

Who was Jesus of Nazareth?

He lived a couple thousand years ago and miraculously cured 10 lepers. Over two billion people worship him.

Who is Jacinto Convit?

He was born 100 years ago and in 1988, he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of an anti-leprosy vaccine.

Never heard of him, right?

Mark Twain was spot on when he said, "A lie can travel half way round the world while the truth is tying its shoes."

Hoop Snakes, Jesus and Oral Roberts

If, unlike me, you never grew up in the rural south, you have probably never heard of a hoop snake. I first began hearing about them when I was about 8 years old.  

Hoop snakes, I was told, grow to terrifying lengths.  Some had been known to attain lengths of 30 feet or more.  Their venom is especially lethal. Cattle weighing a thousand pounds have been known to die within three minutes after being bitten by a hoop snake. I was told they could easily outrun a horse and in fact horses had been known to be killed by hoop snakes. 

How can a snake move so fast? Hoop snakes get their name from an uncanny capability known only to their particular species; the ability to form their body into a hoop by grasping their tail with their jaws. In this unusual configuration they can attain great speeds as they literally roll after their prey. 

When I was a kid,  walking alone on the dusty back roads of southern Missouri, I was always careful to walk in the middle. Weeds and brush on either side could easily conceal a hoop snake, silently waiting for its prey.  Since there was no way one could determine from which side of the road an attack might take place, it was safer to walk in the middle where one would have at least a few feet advantage should a hoop snake give chase.

I had never actually seen a hoop snake, nor had any of my young friends, who warned me about them. But the people who told them knew someone who knew someone who had actually seen one.

Then one summer, an older friend told me he didn't believe hoop snakes existed. I remember not being convinced. How could they not exist when someone, somewhere had actually seen one? It took some time but I finally was able to shed my delusional fear of hoop snakes.

I wonder if Jesus is just another hoop snake. We know he is dangerous because if we don’t believe in him he will see to it that we spend eternity in unbelievable agony.  He makes a hoop snake look like a  teddy bear by comparison.  He leaves no doubt in the Christian bible what he has in mind.  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

There are of course other parallels. For example no one claims to have actually seen Jesus but we know there are people who knew people who knew people who knew people….we would have to string this thing out for two millenia to finally get to the first person who claimed he actually saw and talked to Jesus.  

Well, actually there is one person.   Oral Roberts.   Some 25 years ago, in 1987, Roberts saw Jesus. He was 900 feet tall. And Jesus spoke to him.  He told Roberts that he (Roberts) needed to raise $4.5 million.  4.5 million in “quick money”, otherwise God was going to kill him.  "'I'm asking you to help me extend my life,” Roberts told his television audience.  “We're at the point where God could call Oral Roberts home.”He asked viewers to send $100 immediately and pledge additional amounts later.

I’m sorry I never had the opportunity to meet Oral. He died in 1992 after god graciously allowed him another five years for raising all that cash.  No doubt his name will go down in the history books as the only person in the 20^th century to ever actually see Jesus.

Unless of course, Jesus really is just another hoop snake.

Why My Blog is Named "An HONEST Search for Truth

To me, truth has always taken precedence over everything else. We should search for truth and when we find it, we should have the courage to accept it. The problem with religious people, no matter what faith they adhere to, is that they hold a preconceived notion in their head as to what is true. When overwhelming evidence contradicts their preconceived beliefs, they simply ignore the evidence. 

Strangely we look for and act on evidence in every facet of our lives….except religion. 

A couple of years ago my neighbor, a retired professor and practicing Quaker, graciously invited me to speak at a gathering of religious leaders, the purpose of which was to explain their "faith" to others. The group ranged from a Muslim and Rabbi, through a plethora of other faiths, including Methodists and Baptists. My neighbor thought it only fair that someone who held no faith be invited.

Stupidly, I took him up on his offer.

I explained to the group that we are all born as atheists. It is only through indoctrination that we become Baptists and Catholics, Muslims and Jews, etc. In my short presentation presented (again stupidly) without notes or a prepared script, I gave Christians leaders attending the meeting a fact they were not prepared to hear. A whopping 67% of the world’s population totally reject the idea that Jesus is their savior.

I explained that with a death rate on our planet of 7.99 deaths/1,000 population 157,610 of us die every day. Those numbers quite clearly indicate that if you are a Christian, you have no choice but believe that 73 people each minute of each day are condemned to eternal agony. I looked at my watch and explained that in just the 40 minutes since our meeting started; nearly 3000 people had gone straight to hell.

One preacher literally gasped when I said that and blurted out, “That’s not true!” But the grim fact is if you are a Christian, it is true. His reaction was typical of someone who had been cherry picking bible verses for so long that he had actually began to believe his own propaganda.

To say it is not true is to reject what your own bible and your own Jesus declared in several places on its pages. I’m not saying it. Your own bible says it!

Here, have a look. Matt. 5:28, 9:45, 16:18. Luke 10:15, 12:5, 16:23. James 3:6, John 14:6. If you don’t believe your own bible then you are not a Christian. Period.

Stop a moment and listen to that small voice of reason. That’s not Satan whispering in your ear. That is your brain operating just the way it was designed to operate. Listen to it. There is nothing to fear.

And We Thought HFT Was Fast

Heavenly Father, this prayer is to let you know about a situation that might be of some concern to you. I know you bear a heavy burden, having to sort through all the prayers that come your way each and every day. Christians alone number some 2.3 billion and if they only pray once each day, that’s 2.3 billion right there, and of course 1.6 billion Muslims pray five times each day so that’s another 8 billion. Even if we subtract 20% for those too young to pray, you still receive 8.24 billion each day. The way I figure it that comes in at 95,370 PER SECOND!

My concern is not with the Muslims. Since they reject Jesus as their personal savior, I know where they are headed. No, my concern is with your one and only begotten Son.  Please, I beg of you Heavenly Father, don’t take offence at this, but I am beginning to think (and I tremble when I say it) that your Son may have a lazy streak. 

Why am I so concerned about your boy? Well, there are now 7.2 billion of us alive on this earth and only 33% of us believe His claim as stated unequivocally in John 14:6. It just seems to me that 33% after nearly 2000 years of practice does not reflect well on His efforts.  Even the sorry Houston Astros who came in dead last in 2012 chalked up a better record by winning 34% of their games. And they only had six weeks to practice.

I will pray about this. I figure with prayers coming in at 95,370 per second, one more won’t add that much to your burden. 

Before I close...two more questions.

Do you still take a day off?

Are those little crackers really your Boy?.

Psst...Hey Buddy, Wanna Buy a Bridge?

A rambling article in the New Yorker by Steve Coll entitled, “CAN THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD BE TRUSTED?” finally gets around to answering its own question.

“The Brotherhood has also long emphasized evolutionary politics, as opposed to seizing power in coups d’etat. Some of the Brotherhood’s thinkers have advocated a strategy of gradually converting souls, even if it takes generations, so that Islamic revolution will arrive in the end like a peaceful tide, never to recede.”

The article continues: “Skeptics of the movement have long argued that the Brotherhood is, at its core, anti-democratic (as well as anti-Semitic, about which there can be little doubt). If the Brotherhood occasionally shares power in a particular national democratic setup, this argument goes, it is only as a short-term tactical maneuver, in preparation for dictatorship. Nor, these skeptics continue, will the Egyptian Brotherhood or Hamas ever accept Israel’s legitimacy or national rights.

That view certainly got a lift last Saturday, when Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political leader, told a mass rally in Gaza that Israel would be wiped out through military force, and that a Palestinian state should be created “from resistance, not negotiation.” Meshal, who stood before a tall rocket erected to represent Hamas’s military prowess, went on:

"We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take. We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.”

“Those who favor engagement with Hamas and the Egyptian Brotherhood dismiss such rhetoric as nothing new; they contend that it should be understood as base-rallying political speech..."

Yes, and this is exactly what Joe Kennedy said about Hitler and the Nazis. Better to make peace with them, he said, rather than risk a world war.  Well Britain’s Chamberlain and the French tried that and it didn’t work then and it won’t work now. 

Like Hitler, who we recognized too late was a madman; the Muslim Brotherhood is intent on implanting their delusion on the rest of us. Delusion is defined as: “A persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition.” 

There is no cure for delusion. Drugs are available for psychotics, but nothing is available for delusional people. And even if there were, delusional people would not avail themselves of it because they would think the doctor prescribing the drug was “in on it.” Or if they are religious they would think it was the work of the Devil.

Religion, any religion, is a delusion without a cure and will be the main contributor to the downfall and annihilation of our species.   For those who disagree, I have a nice bridge for sale that connects Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn.

religionrevealed.blogspot.com

The Inaugural

At his 2008 inaugural, President Obama chose Rick Warren, a fundamentalist, to deliver an inaugural prayer. Below is the prayer, all 4 minutes and 36 excruciating seconds of it, along with my comments.

"Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone. It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory. History is your story." 

He didn’t even get through the first paragraph before he exposed his cognitive dissonance when he intoned:  ".......you are the compassionate and merciful one and you are loving to everyone you have made.”

Presumably, Preacher Warren is unaware of the 18 million children under the age of 5 who die each year from the effects of malnutrition or outright starvation when all it would have taken to save them was a few inches of rain.  If it all belongs to Rick’s imaginary friend in the sky, then we should demand he take responsibility for it.

"Now today we rejoice not only in America’s peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge-point of history with the inauguration of our first African American President of the United States. We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequaled possibility, where the son of an African Immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership. And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven. Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity. Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet and every one of our freely elected leaders." 

What a pity that while Rick piled up his prayer requests for the President, he forgot to ask his imaginary celestial dictator to dole out a dollop of wisdom, humility, courage, integrity and compassion to the Republicans.

Perhaps that moment of forgetfulness on Rick’s part is what caused the Senate Republican hypocrites to wrap themselves in the flag of Jesus, and reject a United Nations treaty on the rights of the disabled.

The Republicans couldn't even bring themselves to vote for the rights of soldiers who have lost limbs and eyes in combat while earning a salary of $17,892.00 per year in order to protect the salaries of Senators who earn $174,000 per year and a lifetime pension of over $50,000.00.

"Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or by blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all. When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us."

So Romney and the Republicans knew they would be forgiven when they abandoned the 47% and the brave combat soldiers who returned from the war who were maimed for life.

"When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us. And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches and civility in our attitudes—even when we differ." 

Lesson: We can rape the planet for profit oh ’Lord for we know you will forgive us.

"Help us to share, to serve, and to seek the common good of all. May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet."

More prosperous? More peaceful? Well 4 years have gone by Rick.  Unemployment has spiked to 25% in some European countries and remains depressingly high in the USA. Meanwhile, because of religion,  people are still fighting like cats and dogs.

"And may we never forget that one day, all nations, all people will stand accountable before You. We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care. I humbly ask this in the name of the One who changed my life—Yeshua, Esa, Jesus, Jesus—who taught us to pray: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." 

Rick Warren blathered on for an excruciating 4 minutes and 36 seconds.  By the time he finished his prayer another 158 innocent young children had died from starvation.

“It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory.” 

You said it Rick, not me.

Mr. President, on behalf of the third of religiously unaffiliated adults under 30, without whose help you could not have won the election, we now plead with you to govern, not in accordance with a book of fables which is disavowed by two thirds of our planet’s citizens, but turn instead to the Establishment Clause of our Constitution.

Let’s get off our knees and get to work.

religionrevealed.blogspot.com

"If I Had a Hammer " Peter, Paul and Mary

I have a great idea but first you gotta read this which I got from a website called "The Straight Dope" Fighting Ignorance Since 1973

From the moment the Pope dies, the Secretary of State, I believe, becomes the Camerlengo. He, with the College of Cardinals will run the church until the next Pope is elected.

The Camerlengo supervises all aspects of what goes on from the death of the pope to the election of the next pope. He is involved in the funeral arrangements to the preparing for the conclave and all that goes into that.

But his first duty is to perform a ritual at the deathbed of the Pope. A ritual that goes back to the Middle Ages is to take a silver hammer and lightly tap on the pope's head. Then in a strong voice call out to the Pope in his baptism name. For example, for Pope Paul VI, the Camerlengo would tap the pope on the head and then say, "Giovannit Daltista Enrico Antonio Marie, are you dead?

This is repeated two more times.  Upon the third tap and call to the pope, if the pope does not answer, it is proclaimed, "Pope N. is truly dead!"

O.K.? Got that ?

Now here’s my great idea. The price of silver on the spot market at the close on Friday was $33.40 per ounce.  Just for argument, let’s say the hammer used to determine the health of the pope weighs 32 troy ounces or a little over two pounds. That means the hammer would be worth 1068.80.

Now.

I have in my shop a ball peen hammer which I purchased at a garage sale for 3 bucks.

What if I exchanged my three dollar hammer for the Vatican’s $1068.80 hammer and took the difference ($1065.80) and spent the money buying warm clothes and shoes for homeless children?  I mean, when you think about it, what’s the difference between tapping the dead pope on the head with a silver hammer and a ball peen hammer.

The difference of course is a bunch of kids whose parents are out of a job would get new shoes for Christmas.

Faith and Piano Tuners

What would the 4 ½ billion people who deny Jesus is  their savior think of Christians claims? I’m speaking about the claims that snakes and donkeys talked, that the earth was made in six days, that dead men come back alive, that it's actually possible to drink the blood and eat the flesh of a long dead religious leader, that during a great flood the water rose 15 cubits above the highest mountain where the temperature at that altitude would be 43 degrees below zero. Things like that.

The definition of delusion is: "A persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition." If we string out the logic, there is no other conclusion we can come to than the fact that faith is the starter drug which leads to delusion.

The definition of faith is: “belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof”.

The faith of the 9-11 hijackers was so strong it led to their delusion that they would be met in Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. No proof required.

The faith that Muhammad received revelations from an angel in a cave with no witnesses, leads Muslims to the delusion that the Koran is true and that he rode a winged horse to heaven and back. No proof required. 

The faith that Mormons have that Joseph Smith, with no witnesses present, actually talked to an angel named “Moroni”  who directed him to a book with gold pages inscribed in a “lost” language, complete with magic reading glasses, lead them to the delusion that their Book of Mormon is actually true. No proof required.

The faith that Catholics have that a few words mumbled over a cracker and some wine, lead them to the delusion that it actually (not symbolically; actually) turns into the flesh and blood of a long dead religious leader. No proof required. 

Clearly then, as illustrated by all these examples, faith leads to delusion, a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence

This is frightening. 7.2 billion persons on this earth and a large majority are not only delusional but stand ready to act on their delusions.

Richard Dawkins, world-renowned evolutionary biologist asks: "Would the most advanced life-form in the universe devise such grand concepts as DNA, nuclear fusion, and quantum mechanics and then spend all eternity fussing about whether you regularly sing to him, vote against gay marriage, or accept on faith that the earth is 6,000 years old when there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary? Frankly, I don't believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful creator. But even if I did, I'm certain he would want us to think for ourselves and eschew such claptrap."

It's worse than Dr. Dawkins thinks. Some churches even bicker over whether they should play a piano or have musical instruments. Once they get that sorted out with their god maybe he can turn his attention to the millions of children who starve to death each year. My personal hope is the "no music" adherents win out. They could probably save one child from starvation just on the money they spend each year on piano tuners.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

With the election behind us and Christmas just around the corner, my thoughts have turned to children. As we all know, children will believe anything adults tell them.  There are reasons for this of course and it no doubt has to do with how we evolved. 

Imagine, for example, what would have happened to the children of our ancestors who refused to listen to their parents or other adults, when cautioned  not to swim in a particular river, or told not to eat a particular red berry, even though it looked delicious.   Children who refused to believe what they were told would have quickly been removed from the gene pool because they would have been eaten by crocodiles or died of food poisoning.  Soon we would have produced only children that believed everything adults told them and….guess what? That is exactly what we have today.

Surprisingly, as we have recently learned, this doesn't only apply to teenagers and pre-teens.

A National Institutes of Health study has found that the part of the brain that includes critical thinking skills is not fully developed until the age of 25. (See “Maturation of the Prefrontal Cortex” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

The fact that kids will believe anything adults tell them places a great burden on us because once we implant ideas in their heads before they have learned critical thinking skills they are nearly impossible to dislodge.  Therefore we owe it to our kids to be very careful what we tell them. We want to be sure we tell them the truth and if we don’t know the truth, its o.k. to tell them we don’t have the answer.

Let me give a few examples.

Hindus, which number well over a billion, believe their god Ram built a 30 mile long land bridge between the southern tip of India and the island of Sri Lanka, using an army of devoted monkeys for labor. The reason Ram felt compelled to build the bridge was so that he could rescue his Princess from an evil king. (By the way, the so-called bridge is under water now because of a sea level rise.) If you have the least bit of curiosity as to what it really is, Google the word “tombolo.”  

No, no, you must be thinking. No one in their right mind could seriously believe a story like that. Well, you would be wrong. Because this is what they were taught as children, they really do believe that. In fact, they believe it so strongly that when India decided to dredge a shipping canal between the countries so that ships could avoid sailing all the way around Sri Lanka, shaving 26 hours off their time, Hindu organizations swung into action and petitioned India's Supreme Court to put a stop to it because it should be considered a "religious monument".  In fact, newspapers reported that Hindus rioted all over India, when the news came out about the dredging proposal. Hindus blocked road traffic and even rail movements as far as a thousand miles away in northern India. Newspapers reported at least two people were killed in the riots.

As it is, ships sailing between India's west and east coasts have to go around Sri Lanka. With tanker rates averaging $18,000.00 per day, each time a ship has to sail all the way around Sri Lanka it costs consumers on average an extra $20,000.00. Think of all the fuel wasted.

Google http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2007/09/bridge-built-by-monkeys.html

And if you think that’s weird, I challenge you to Google ” Hindu shrine of Amarnath.”  Caution: May not be suitable for children (unless you are a Hindu). We are talking a giant frozen icicle here, roughly in the shape of a penis and Hindus go absolutely gaga over the thing. They spend a small fortune and risk their lives to visit an  ice stalagmite in roughly in the shape of a penis. The cave is located high up in the mountains and is very difficult and expensive to get to.

Okay enough of that. How about another example?

Islam, which claims to have 1.7 billion adherents,  make up 24% of the world population (compared to 33% Christian) They teach their children that Jesus is not their savior, that he was only a prophet and that their very own prophet, Muhammad,  rode a white winged horse to heaven and back. Their children believe every word of it. What do you think? Do you suppose 1.7 billion could be wrong? Do you think they should teach their children that Jesus is not their savior?

Catholicism: Exorcism is the practice of evicting demons or other evil spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have taken control of. Catholics even have an “exorcism school” where they teach priests to perform an exorcism ceremony. They carry a crucifix while performing the ritual.  The comedian Richard Pryor joked that the reason people use a crucifix against vampires is that vampires are allergic to bullshit.  I would imagine that Richard might have had the same idea about the notion that the little communion wafer is literally.... not figuratively.... literally, the body of a long dead religious leader. Catholics have coined a long name for it. Transubstantiation, which means that the bread and wine of Communion become, in substance the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Catholic adults teach Catholic children this. There are 1.2 billion Catholics. Most of the kids believe it.

Mormons teach their children that their founding prophet, Joseph Smith, was guided to the spot where some golden plates were buried by an angel named Moroni.  Conveniently buried with the plates were some magic reading stones. You see the plates were inscribed with an ancient lost language and the reading stones allowed Smith to translate the lost language into the book of Mormon.  Mormonism, as it turns out is the only religion on earth that is so new that it can demonstrably be proven wrong. 

Turns out Joseph Smith was a smooth talking con man who was hauled into court on more than one occasion; once for making false claims about his abilities to find treasure with a divining rod. He had 33 wives. This information is readily available on the internet for those who have even a hint of curiosity about the Mormon religion. What would you think if someone taught your children these fairy tales?

The examples could go on and on but I won’t burden you with others. Instead, I have a proposition.

What if, in the spirit of understanding, we all came together and, from this moment on, agreed not to teach our children anything at all about our religion until they had reached the age of 25. No talk about  devoted monkeys, flying white horses, demons, dead men popping up out of their graves, pregnant virgins, talking snakes and donkeys….all of it….until our kids reach the age when their frontal cortexes are fully developed.  

If you really, really have the faith you claim to have (and I’m talking to those of all faiths) then after 25 years, you should know that your god will reveal which religion is the one true religion.  Why would he leave us in the dark? After all, aren't we his crowning achievement?  Once and for all we would know the truth and it would no longer be necessary to gather several times a week to “study” our scriptures, whether it be the bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran or all those gods in India.  And don’t worry about your kids going to hell. If we don’t tell them about Jesus or Smith or Moses or Muhammad, how can a loving God send them to an eternal of agony if they have never heard of him?

I’m inviting everyone to show me how my argument is delinquent in some way. 

The Time We Almost Died

Robert Krulwich/NPR
Add all of us up, all 7 billion human beings on earth, and clumped together we weigh roughly 750 billion pounds. That, says Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, is more than 100 times the biomass of any large animal that's ever walked the Earth. And we're still multiplying. Most demographers say we will hit 9 billion before we peak, and what happens then?

Well, we've waxed. So we can wane. Let's just hope we wane gently. Because once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40.

Forty? Come on, that can't be right. Well, the technical term is 40 "breeding pairs" (children not included). More likely there was a drastic dip and then 5,000 to 10,000 bedraggled Homo sapiens struggled together in pitiful little clumps hunting and gathering for thousands of years until, in the late Stone Age, we humans began to recover. But for a time there, says science writer Sam Kean, "We damn near went extinct."

I'd never heard of this almost-blinking-out. That's because I'd never heard of Toba, the "supervolcano." It's not a myth. While details may vary, Toba happened.

Toba, The Supervolcano

Once upon a time, says Sam, around 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba, on Sumatra, in Indonesia went off, blowing roughly 650 miles of vaporized rock into the air. It is the largest volcanic eruption we know of, dwarfing everything else...

Robert Krulwich/NPR
That eruption dropped roughly six centimeters of ash — the layer can still be seen on land — over all of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian and South China Sea. According to the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the Toba eruption scored an "8", which translates to "mega-colossal" — that's two orders of magnitude greater than the largest volcanic eruption in historic times at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused the 1816 "Year Without a Summer" in the northern hemisphere.

With so much ash, dust and vapor in the air, Sam Kean says it's a safe guess that Toba "dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash (imagine wading through a giant ashtray) across acres and acres of plants." Berries, fruits, trees, African game became scarce; early humans, living in East Africa just across the Indian Ocean from Mount Toba, probably starved, or at least, he says, "It's not hard to imagine the population plummeting."

Then — and this is more a conjectural, based on arguable evidence — an already cool Earth got colder. The world was having an ice age 70,000 years ago, and all that dust hanging in the atmosphere may have bounced warming sunshine back into space. Sam Kean writes "There's in fact evidence that the average temperature dropped 20-plus degrees in some spots," after which the great grassy plains of Africa may have shrunk way back, keeping the small bands of humans small and hungry for hundreds, if not thousands of more years.

So we almost vanished.

But now we're back.

It didn't happen right away. It took almost 200,000 years to reach our first billion (that was in 1804), but now we're on a fantastic growth spurt, to 3 billion by 1960, another billion almost every 13 years since then, till by October, 2011, we zipped past the 7 billion marker, says writer David Quammen, "like it was a "Welcome to Kansas" sign on the highway."

In his new book Spillover, Quamman writes:

We're unique in the history of mammals. We're unique in this history of vertebrates. The fossil record shows that no other species of large-bodied beast — above the size of an ant, say or an Antarctic krill — has ever achieved anything like such abundance as the abundance of humans on Earth right now.

But our looming weight makes us vulnerable, vulnerable to viruses that were once isolated deep in forests and mountains, but are now bumping into humans, vulnerable to climate change, vulnerable to armies fighting over scarce resources. The lesson of Toba the Supervolcano is that there is nothing inevitable about our domination of the world. With a little bad luck, we can go too.

We once almost did.

• Anatomically modern humans appear from about 200,000 years ago. That is to say, by then our brains developed to about the size they are today, making us "fully human." As the piece from NPR's Robert Krulwich points out, we nearly died out about 70,000 years ago because of this massive volcano.

  
  
• So what was God's roll in all this? 
  
  
  Well, as Christopher Hitchens (1945-2011) pointed out, God sat back with arms crossed for about 198,000 years and watched his greatest creation suffer from heat, cold, drought, starvation, Toba, the supervolcano, wild animal predation and a life span of maybe 25 years if we were lucky. He didn't offer any help at all. Then in a brilliant stroke of outside the box thinking, some 2000 years ago, he deposited a "savior" in a remote area of the planet, among the most ignorant people on earth (the Chinese were much more advanced) wiped his hands and said, "There, that oughta do it."
  
  
  How's that workin' out for humanity? At 7.2 billion human inhabitants, maybe God needs to send us another volcano or another asteroid like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Sure would beat starving to death. If our loving benevolent god decides to send another asteroid the size of Manhattan, I hope it lands right on top of my head. Won't know what hit me.
  
  
  Now if I were a New Yorker, waiting for God's Hurricane to inundate the city, I would have several more hours to get the hell out.
  Or if I could just find two or three Christians, they could just pray the damned thing away. 
  
  
   Matt 18:19 " Again I say to you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven."

You Better Watch Out You Better Not Cry

Willful ignorance is one of the most egregious sins we can commit.  When every scientist (and I mean real scientist, not pseudoscientist) tells us that the earth is billions of years old and someone says, “Well, I prefer not to think of it that way; I prefer to believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, then that person has rejected the very thing that separates him/ her from lower animals, the ability to reason.

If there is a god, then surely it is he/she/it that gave us the gift of reason.  Not using it is tantamount to rejecting the gift. And the worst insult we can hand someone is to reject a gift given with good intentions.

I have found that the most die-hard Christians know very little about their own bible, even though they have been attending “bible study” for decades.  It’s doubtful any of them are reading this now because they are frightened silly of knowledge, but just in case, let me help you with your study.

Please turn to Genesis 4:8. “And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” Now, brothers and sisters, what got Cain so upset that he committed the first recorded murder in (your) history?  Well, it was because God rejected Cain’s gift, right? Take a moment and ponder that. The very first murder was committed over a rejected gift.

A word to the wise. Christmas is just around the corner. The busiest day is actually the day after Christmas when disappointed benefactors stand in long lines to return (reject) unwanted gifts. So just make sure the person who gave you that huge clear plastic bag of one size fits all white socks for Christmas doesn't see you standing in that line clutching the gift he just gave you. 

Somebody could get hurt.

Examining Our Beliefs

Watching the Catholic charity function in NYC where the obscenely overweight cherub cheeked Cardinal Dolan sat between Romney and President Obama, I was struck by how durable superstition is.

Because of the fact that there have been thousands of gods, dozens of “holy books” tens of thousands of different denominations, sects and cults, it should become readily obvious to anyone with even a miniscule amount of critical thinking skills that all these beliefs are nothing more than creations in our minds.

Yet, here, were three prominent men, professing “belief” in three wildly disparate belief systems, while hypocritically pretending to “respect” the other’s religion, when in fact the only thing they shared in common was that all three religions were born out of fear and ignorance.

A recent Pew survey found that among younger Americans, 25% say they are not currently affiliated with religion. Good! These brave young people have rejected the superstition with which adults have attempted to clutter their minds.

While it’s easy to criticize Muslim fanatics who fear a little girl with a book enough to blow her brains out, shouldn't we summon the courage to examine our own beliefs?

Religion can no longer be separated from politics. It matters if Romney thinks he is protected with magic underwear and that he has a prophet who arrives at his truth as it is revealed to him (and nobody else) which he then passes on to his minions.

Can anyone else think of the problems we might encounter if Romney’s 85 year old prophet receives a revelation that prescribes a course for the country (such as war) that would contradict what the electorate feels is the best course? We had that from Bush when he prayed to his god about attacking Iraq.

And that Catholic charity function?

When the Vatican decides to sell all its valuable paintings, its gold, its stocks and bonds, its wine collection, the popes golden throne, and give the proceeds to the needy, then they can ask others to support their charity. Oh, and while they are at it they could sell the popemobile and even his cute little red shoes. Think of all the wealthy Catholics that would be willing to pay a small fortune for those things alone. Oh, and they could fire all those guys in dresses and funny hats. Maybe they could get a real job.

The Vatican holds the dubious record of consuming the most wine per capita than any other nation in the world. The Pope and his minions (all 931 of them) guzzled down over 70 quarts of wine PER PERSON last year. And that’s average consumption per person. Makes you wonder how many of these folks go to bed shit-faced every night. No wonder so many of them, like Cardinal Dolan,  are blessed with such rosy red cheeks.

Until they get rid of all their worldly possessions, they shouldn't be asking for donations.  I will continue to give my financial support to Planned Parenthood, Freedom From Religion Foundation,  Center for Inquiry  and the ACLU.  And I’ll stick with the ten dollar wine, not the high priced stuff they drink at the Vatican.

The Bible and The Book of Mormon

I’ll start with three indisputable facts and use logic to come to a conclusion.

Fact 1. Ubiquitous Christian billboards proclaim Jesus is coming soon.

Fact 2. Mormons claim Jesus will touch down in Jackson County Missouri.

Fact 3. Kansas City is located in Jackson County, Missouri.

Conclusion: The arrival of Jesus can soon be witnessed from the top of tall buildings in K.C. Missouri.

Worth a Reprint From Sam Harris

The latest wave of Muslim hysteria and violence has now spread to over twenty countries. The walls of our embassies and consulates have been breached, their precincts abandoned to triumphant mobs, and many people have been murdered—all in response to an unwatchable Internet video titled “Innocence of Muslims.” Whether over a film, a cartoon, a novel, a beauty pageant, or an inauspiciously named teddy bear, the coming eruption of pious rage is now as predictable as the dawn. This is already an old and boring story about old, boring, and deadly ideas. And I fear it will be with us for the rest of our lives.

Our panic and moral confusion were at first sublimated in attacks upon the hapless Governor Romney. I am no fan of Romney’s, and I would find the prospect of his presidency risible if it were not so depressing, but he did accurately detect the first bleats of fear in the Obama administration’s reaction to this crisis. Romney got the timing of events wrong—confusing, as many did, a statement made by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for an official government response to the murder of Americans in Libya. But the truth is that the White House struck the same note of apology, disavowing the offending speech while claiming to protect free speech in principle. It may seem a small detail, given the heat of the moment—but so is a quivering lip.

Our government followed the path of appeasement further by attempting to silence the irrepressible crackpot Pastor Terry Jones, who had left off burning copies of the Qur’an just long enough to promote the film. The administration also requested that Google remove “Innocence of Muslims” from its servers. These maneuvers attest to one of two psychological and diplomatic realities: Either our government is unwilling to address the problem at hand, or the problem is so vast and terrifying that we have decided to placate the barbarians at the gate.

The contagion of moral cowardice followed its usual course, wherein liberal journalists and pundits began to reconsider our most basic freedoms in light of the sadomasochistic fury known as “religious sensitivity” among Muslims. Contributors to The New York Times and NPR spoke of the need to find a balance between free speech and freedom of religion—as though the latter could possibly be infringed by a YouTube video. As predictable as Muslim bullying has become, the moral confusion of secular liberals appears to be part of the same clockwork.

Consider what is actually happening: Some percentage of the world’s Muslims—Five percent? Fifteen? Fifty? It’s not yet clear—is demanding that all non-Muslims conform to the strictures of Islamic law. And where they do not immediately resort to violence in their protests, they threaten it. Carrying a sign that reads “Behead Those Who Insult the Prophet” may still count as an example of peaceful protest, but it is also an assurance that infidel blood would be shed if the imbecile holding the placard only had more power. This grotesque promise is, of course, fulfilled in nearly every Muslim society. To make a film like “Innocence of Muslims” anywhere in the Middle East would be as sure a method of suicide as the laws of physics allow.

What exactly was in the film? Who made it? What were their motives? Was Muhammad really depicted? Was that a Qur’an burning, or some other book? Questions of this kind are obscene. Here is where the line must be drawn and defended without apology: We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.

At moments like this, we inevitably hear—from people who don’t know what it’s like to believe in paradise—that religion is just a way of channeling popular unrest. The true source of the problem can be found in the history of western aggression in the region. It is our policies, rather than our freedoms, that they hate. I believe that the future of liberalism—and much else—depends on our overcoming this ruinous self-deception.  Religion only works as a pretext for political violence because many millions of people actually believe what they say they believe: that imaginary crimes like blasphemy and apostasy are killing offenses.

Most secular liberals think that all religions are the same, and they consider any suggestion to the contrary a sign of bigotry. Somehow, this article of faith survives daily disconfirmation. Our language is largely to blame for this. As I have pointed out on many occasions, “religion” is a term like “sports”: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing, street luge); some are safer but synonymous with violence (boxing, mixed martial arts); and some entail no more risk of serious injury than standing in the shower (bowling, badminton). To speak of “sports” as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do, or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common, apart from breathing? Not much. The term “religion” is scarcely more useful.

Consider Mormonism: Many of my fellow liberals would consider it morally indecent to count Romney’s faith against him. In their view, Mormonism must be just like every other religion. The truth, however, is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has more than its fair share of quirks. For instance, its doctrine was explicitly racist until 1978, at which point God apparently changed his mind about black people (a few years after Archie Bunker did) and recommended that they be granted the full range of sacraments and religious responsibilities. By this time, Romney had been an adult and an exceptionally energetic member of his church for more than a decade.

Unlike the founders of most religions, about whom very little is known, Mormonism is the product of the plagiarisms and confabulations of an obvious con man, Joseph Smith, whose adventures among the credulous were consummated (in every sense) in the full, unsentimental glare of history. Given how much we know about Smith, it is harder to be a Mormon than it is to be a Christian. A firmer embrace of the preposterous is required—and the fact that Romney can manage it says something about him, just as it would if he were a Scientologist proposing to park his E-meter in the Oval Office. The spectrum between rational belief and self-serving delusion has some obvious increments: It is one thing to believe that Jesus existed and was probably a remarkable human being. It is another to accept, as most Christians do, that he was physically resurrected and will return to earth to judge the living and the dead. It is yet another leap of faith too far to imagine, as all good Mormons must, that he will work his cosmic magic from the hallowed ground of Jackson County, Missouri.

That final, provincial detail matters. It makes Mormonism objectively less plausible than run-of-the-mill Christianity—as does the related claim that Jesus visited the “Nephites” in America at some point after his resurrection. The moment one adds seer stones, sacred underpants, the planet Kolob, and a secret handshake required to win admittance into the highest heaven, Mormonism stands revealed for what it is: the religious equivalent of rhythmic gymnastics.

The point, however, is that I can say all these things about Mormonism, and disparage Joseph Smith to my heart’s content, without fearing that I will be murdered for it. Secular liberals ignore this distinction at every opportunity and to everyone’s peril. Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would be required to stage a similar production about Islam. The project is unimaginable—not only in Beirut, Baghdad, or Jerusalem, but in New York City.

The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost. And the only forces on earth that can recover it are strong, secular governments that will face down charges of blasphemy with scorn. No apologies necessary. Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance. And Governor Romney, though he is wrong about almost everything under the sun (including, very likely, the sun), is surely right to believe that it is time our government delivered this message without blinking.