Hello Darkness! The Official Blog of Helen Keller

Folks,

If you've been reading things on the internet recently, you'll have noticed an alarming trend that should cause your ass to pucker hard enough forcing out a hershey-kiss turdlet into your undies. That is, the rise of strident religious intolerance from religions that claim to be about peace and love.

Firstly, I don't think that any one religion has a lock on intolerance, ignorance, crimes against humanity and its share of violent adherents that twist spirtitual understanding into martial diatribes. So, I don't want any preachy fucking letters from mouth-breathing mud-sucking religious dildos looking to pervert this message too into one of "my religion is awesome and/or better".

But I expect those letters. I expect them because religious discourse in this world has degenerated into hypocritical religious tribalism. People don't seem to look at what is good in other people, rather, they seek to extoll the abuses of the other religions. If any of these modern combatants were to take three steps back, eat one of those red, white and blue rocket popsicles that are way too overpriced at airshows and stare at the problem they so readily fight, they'd notice a very odd thing:

People want to destroy the other religions because they believe those other religions are hell bent on destroying them. Seeking out the other's holy works, they pinpoint those passages that confirm their darkest fears. For everything that Muhammed said regarding peace, tolerance and love, some focus on those passages that cry for the death of all non-Muslims. What about this from the Hadith? If anyone harms, God will harm him, and if anyone shows hostility to others, God will show hostility to him. Skipped, never to be mentioned. And then, in a stunning display of hypocrisy that would blow the nuts off an elephant at 30 paces, they call for the death of all Muslims. Religious integration becomes a kill-or-be-killed first strike scenario. Everybody wants to kill everybody else because everybody else is scary. Keep in mind that you are "everbody else" to "everybody else". See the problem with the death-to-the-other sucker-punch philosophy?

Is that even a Christian response anyway? Well, yes and no. Jesus did tell his disciples that forgiveness is not one chance, not seven chances, but seven times seventy chances and more. Then he also called for the death of those that would deny his kingdom. But Christians don't want to be typified by this latter answer. They want to believe they have a moral highground, so the hypocrisy doesn't even register. Look at Mel Gibson's film, The Smashin' of the Christ. All of it is violence against their team-captain. It's gasoline on a burning bonfire.

From an outsider's perspective, there's no difference in the radical application of any religion. Diehards are diehards, no matter what book they read, what church they attend or what DHARMA station they believe has the most interesting orientation film.

Every time somebody identifies a religion with a murderer, keep in mind that all religions fit this nasty profile. The Muslims have Osama bin Laden, the Jews have Meir Kahane and the Christians have David Koresh. Going for body counts to justify hatred? The Christians win with their home-grown boy Hitler.

So what's the point then? IF every major religion has calls for the deaths of the others, where do we go? Should we give every religious person a badge identifying what team they're on, a nailed-stick and the ruins of Troy to slug out the final answer to the God-question? According to the tribalists, yes, it can be no other way. The diehards believe that if Jesus Christ could have rocked a knee into Mohammed's groin, he would have. Does anybody believe this?

But these people don't typify the religions. By negotiating murder, each of them denies tenets of their own religion and further identify themselves as radicals. Here radicalism is the condoning of any mean, measure or method to achieve the goal of religious domination in the name of freedom from harm by other religions.

Instead of conversion of ANYBODY for any reason, we do have to have the moderates, in this case, those people that preach faith from the heart, not the barrel of a gun, gather together and agree to socially ostracize those that would pervert any message of peace into one of hate, violence and genocide.

Peace begins with tolerance from everybody as everybody is equally to blame for the current state of affairs.