Deep Thoughts: Atheist James Doyle murdered in Iowa

Deep Thoughts: Atheist James Doyle murdered in Iowa

Beliefs...why?

Beliefs....why?

If you love books and reading, surely you know by now that THE place to go online for that is Amazon dot com. I was just browsing through Amazon for no particular reason and I came upon Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One Of America's Leading Atheists, by Dan Barker. Having already read Losing Faith in Faith, I wondered if this was a completely new book or what. Turned out someone else wondered the same and posted the question under the listing. There were answers/comments. (It is essentially the same book with new information about his subsequent debates, etc., and a new forward by Richard Dawkins.) Among the comments was this gem from "Janet":

Please do not give this book the time of day. Our liberties and freedoms are being trampled on each day chipped away at then they come into my town with signs like "In Reason We Trust" billboards.This is a sign of the times non-believers who want to convert and recruit YOU.JESUS

LIVES and we are in the "END TIMES" If you want to read something pick up the Holy Bible




This is hardly new, but the thing that struck me was the line, "...who want to convert and recruit YOU." I try to imagine, what is in Janet's mind when she says that? "recruit you" to what? Does she have any idea? Does she equate atheists with Satan worshipers and baby eaters? Perhaps a reader may agree with Janet? It is obviously a fearful prospect to her. I think back to when I was a devout Christian. Of course, that was before the Internet, but I almost never heard or thought of "atheist". If I happened across a use of some variant of the word, it was likely from someone like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson, or possibly my own preacher who used it, of course, in a very pejorative tone. Often connected it with humanism, as in "those wretched atheistic humanists who place man above God". Had I had Internet access way back then, I'm fairly certain I would have become atheist much sooner, because I would likely have read a lot FROM atheists and seen that they were not at all as depicted by the Christians I heard. Not that becoming an atheist would have been my choice...it would, I think, just have been inevitable for me...it would have triggered some change in my brain.




I cannot be certain of that though. Because obviously, a great many people now have read huge amounts of atheistic material and remain Christian. How is this possible? It certainly suggests that intellectual ability, education, etc., have little to do with whether one is atheist or Christian, as my favorite poster boy for this subject amply demonstrates: Francis Collins, the world class scientist who ran the Human Genome Project and is now head of the National Institutes of Health...and a devout Christian. If you eliminate those things, what is left? This further suggests to me that the notion of "choosing your beliefs" is simply not a facility the human brain possesses. I don't recall reading in Dan Barker's book where he says, "I chose to be an atheist." Of course, virtually all Christians,as well as most atheists will say they chose their present position and many will typically denigrate those on the "other side" as dumb, ignorant, wicked, evil, stupid, uneducated, ad nauseum. I think it abundantly obvious that they are both dead wrong to do this. Atheists, who generally like to brag about their education and intellectual ability, should give serious consideration to the problem of how and why so many very brilliant and educated people are nonetheless theists. Christians and other theists should consider that atheists, by definition, have no belief in any God, and thus have no desire to oppose it, fear it, get loose from it, etc.




When I realized that I was BECOMING an atheist, it scared the piss outta me. Obviously, I was not yet an atheist at that point...otherwise, of what could I have been afraid? I was still trying very hard to believe, and of course, prayed fervently, "help my unbelief", because I was scared that somehow, some way my "salvation" was slipping away from me and that I would be doomed to eternal torture. (My spell checker said the word I initially wrote in that sentence was wrong; "slavation"...Freudian much?) At this point I still believed that humans had immortal souls that would live forever and the only question was whether it would be in heaven or hell. After some hours...a day or two...it finally settled in my head. "You don't believe God is there. That makes you an atheist". My fervent prayer went unanswered, as I realized all the others had, and it was then that an acceptance of my fate settled in and I sat about trying to find out as much as I could about this new state of affairs I seemed to find myself in. Then began my journey into freethought, finding out all about what that was and meant, and then moving on to what I call "educated atheist". By that I mean an atheist who has read and studied and understands the evidence, the history and the philosophical and theological underpinnings, as opposed to one who simply never had any belief in any gods and just never gave it a thought.




Most have probably heard of something called "confirmation bias". This is a tendency among most humans to interpret pieces of information as supportive of beliefs currently held. I would sometimes pray for a good parking spot and when I found one, it was "Aha! Thank you Lord!", and I remembered that. When I did not find one, the incident was simply ignored. Another bias maybe less heard of is "hindsight bias". This is the tendency to assume that things are more predictable than they really are... when you thought X would happen and it did, you say, "I KNEW it!" But of course you didn't know it at all. A slight twist on this, as it applies to beliefs is that, upon genuinely realizing that you believe X, even though X may be very different or even opposite of what was previously believed about X, your brain says, "Well of course I believe X...I changed my mind." But you didn't change your mind at all. Rather, your mind was changed, and you accept the satisfying and convenient notion that you purposely made the change.




Suppose that you are a genuine and devout Christian. You are perfectly happy with your knowledge that God is in control, that when you die you will go to heaven as God's word says, that you are a good person, that you believe in love and charity and trying to live your life as Christlike as you can, albeit knowing you remain a humble sinner and must continue your walk in or with the Lord... I ask you: What possible motivation could you have to suddenly decide, "Nope, I'm gonna be an atheist"? And if you did somehow, some way, decide this, how would you go about implementing this decision? These are not rhetorical questions; you certainly don't have to answer me, but don't you think you owe it to yourself to actually answer such questions in your own mind?




Conversely...you are an atheist, perhaps on the order of a Dawkins or Hitchens, you are very well educated - formally or not - well read, very bright, and there is nothing short of a visit from a God that would make you believe one exists. Suppose that suddenly you are a Christian? Maybe it happened quickly - a "road to Damascus" conversion - maybe it happened very slowly over many years, but you suddenly understand, "I really believe this...and here's why". If such a thing did happen, would you not say to all and sundry, "I changed my mind"? For most of us who are atheist now, the thought is horrifying and we might swear vehemently it is impossible! Yet, we know of people who were once Christian and are now atheist (Dan Barker for example) ...people who were once atheist and are now Christian (Lee Strobel for example).




Naturally, the first response from both sides is, "Well, he never was a REAL Christian/Atheist". Why would we say that? Perhaps a desperate need to hang on to the illusion/delusion that "I am in charge of my mind and I make my own decisions"?




Granted, some people make it difficult to accept that they truly were REAL whatever before the change. Lee Strobel is an example of that too. He says, "I was an atheist for most of my life. I thought that the idea of an all powerful, all loving God was just silly. I learned in school that evolution was where life came from, so what do you need God for? And I had a lot of self-motivation for living an atheistic lifestyle. I was living a very immoral life and a drunken life, life that was really a hundred percent focused on journalism."
Oh, that brings a whole SLEW of questions and comments, right? Was he really an atheist in the same way the you are an atheist (if you are)?




And what about Dan Barker...was he REALLY a Christian before his change? Was he traveling around the country year after year, preaching things he didn't believe were true? For what purpose? He didn't exactly get Pat Robertson rich from his evangelism. Once he became an atheist, did he then say, "Oh goody, now I can lie and cheat and steal and rape and mangle all I want because there is no God"? Reading Strobel's "testimony" one might get the idea that HE thought such things, before he became a good Christian. Maybe becoming a Christian, if you never were before, involves a huge dose of real or imagined guilt?




I am completely convinced that no one can believe what they want. About anything. Ever. I don't know of a way (yet) for anyone to empirically prove that is true or false. I am only certain that I cannot make myself believe any given proposition that I do not currently believe, just as a matter of choice or will. I think it reasonable to assume other minds have a similar basic limitation. You can test yourself if you want to. Simply think for a moment about anything at all that you believe to be true, about anything. Now, just for a period of 60 seconds, force yourself to believe the opposite of that. If you can honestly say you can do that, I think that is awesome. If you cannot, then I would hope you remember that and never deride others for "stupidly" believing - or not believing - X, because they choose to. I am not alone in this heresy. Ingersoll said, "Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must." Why I Am An Agnostic






Would I try to convince you, if I could, that atheism is true? When I started my first web site back in 1998, part of the URL was "atheistevangelist". Does that tell you anything? Why did I want to "evangelize" about atheism then? The same basic reason anyone is eager to tell other people about something they have just discovered. "New convert zeal". Then, I still thought that anyone who seriously educated themselves about these things could not possibly avoid becoming an atheist. "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov. Obviously, I was wrong about that. So I stopped calling myself an atheist evangelist, gradually stopped most of the debating and arguing, and a bit of depression crept in at the realization that you can very seldom ever convince anyone of anything as far as "the big questions" of life. Sure, I might convince you to go to the store with me, but convince you there is no such thing as a God, if you really believe there is? Not likely.




At this point some may throw up their hands and just totally withdraw and cease even talking about it. I know a few of my friends here wish to HELL that I would do just that, lol. Some say, the Christians and the atheists are getting the same way, obnoxious as hell, each claiming they are right and everyone else is wrong; soon even the atheists will be going door to door like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Why can't they all just shut the hell up and mind their own business and leave people to believe whatever they want? Hmm... back there again.




I thought about this from the Christian side too, after all I was one for around thirty years or so. When I was a Christian, why would I want to tell other people, why would I want them to believe what I believed? So that they could come to know Jesus Christ as their personal savior, that they could know they had been forgiven for all their sins, by virtue of Jesus having died on the cross and His resurrection, and all they have to do to KNOW they have eternal life with God is just ACCEPT this wondrous gift by faith. To know where you are going to spend eternity is a profoundly important thing...you WILL spend it somewhere. If you turn away from God you will spend eternity in Hell, and I can cite you many scriptures from God's Word, the Bible, telling you so. But God loves you and wants you to be with Him forever...John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Like riding a bicycle...you never forget this stuff.




I would want you to believe so you could live forever in a good place rather than a bad place because you do live forever and it's your belief or faith and God's grace that determines where. What do you think is the central premise in this thinking? That you are going to live forever? Yep. But what if it ain't so? What if there is no such thing as living forever, no such thing as any immortal soul? You gonna go with some form of Pascal's Wager and "just believe", just in case it's true that you will live forever, just to cover yer ass? We just went through that "I choose to believe" stuff. Sure, you can SAY "I believe" all you want, but saying and doing are different. And now some folk may start getting really pissed, if they haven't already, and say well, hell nobody knows what happens after death, there's no way TO know. Really? Of all the people who have ever died in the world, especially all the wonderful Christians; bishops and popes and saints, if any of them still knew anything and had any ability to tell us about it, don't you think they would? At least a FEW of them? Someone once joked that we know there is no afterlife because if there were, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov would have written a book about it by now.




So, as an atheist, why would I want you to believe that? This is it, when you're dead, you're dead, there is no God, no hope, no afterlife, no soul, what the hell is so attractive about that? Do you notice any error here? "Attractive"? What does it matter whether it's "attractive" or not? Do you really think you have to like or feel good about a thing in order for it to be true? Where is it carved in stone that "The Truth will make you feel good"? Saying "I like this" or "I don't like this" before you have really investigated is putting the cart before the horse. If you really are a person who wants to know truth about things, then you determine whether X is true or false BEFORE you layer your emotional reactions to it on there. So, am I saying that being an atheist is miserable? Not hardly. You should read what Robert G. Ingersoll said about that. I'll include it below.




Do you think if you became an atheist you might start doing stuff like lying and cheating and raping and pillaging? First, you probably already do some of the lying and cheating anyway. Do you see gangs of atheists running amuck in the streets of anywhere doing this stuff? Does it occur to you that a vastly larger percentage of Christians and other theists are in prison for violent crimes than the percentage of atheists? What might explain that fact? Is it starting to sound like the old atheist evangelist is re-emerging, he asked with a devilish grin? Oops.




But really, why would I personally care whether Bill or Fred or Sally Ann is a Christian or a Muslim or an atheist? Who cares? I don't really see any reason to care very much whether any given individual thinks this or that. But collectively...people do things and don't do things, based partly on what they believe about such matters. Collectively, that's a very big part of what makes a given society have the nature that it does. How many atheists do you suppose went to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally? Very few? Because atheists have no honor? Nah. Would Obama be in deeper shit if more people started thinking he was an atheist than think he is a Muslim? A rather homely-looking Asian woman shows up on your TV screen and says she is an atheist lesbian and a socialist and she is running for governor. Does she have a chance of winning? Does she have a chance of getting off the podium alive?




Beliefs matter. Truth matters. I know I can't convince any true believer. But just on the remote possibly that some hapless victim of uncertainty may stagger by... or someone who honestly has a desire to know stuff and learn...




That piece I mentioned earlier written by Ingersoll? It's part XI of his Why I Am An Agnostic:


When I became convinced that the universe is natural--that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world--not even in infinite space.

I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live to my own ideal--free to live for myself and those I loved--free to use all my faculties, all my senses--free to spread imagination's wings--free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope--free to judge and determine for myself--free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past--free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies--free from the fear of eternal pain--free from the winged creatures of the night--free from devils, ghosts, and gods.




For the first time I was free.





There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought--no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings--no chains for my limbs--no lashes for my back--no fires for my flesh--no master's frown or threat--no following in another's steps--no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all words.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain--for the freedom of labor and thought--to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound in chains--to those by fire consumed--to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high,






THAT LIGHT MIGHT CONQUER DARKNESS STILL!





Robert Green Ingersoll





(1833-1899)






Bless me father, for I have sinned...I had the misfortune to be born a bibliophile with a brain far too slow and limited to truly indulge.



Here's something. You know there are several "e-readers" available, right, including Amazon's Kindle? I discovered it is possible to download and use the Kindle app for a PC without having to buy the Kindle. I would think this is especially good for those who have a laptop...you already essentially have your Kindle in your hand. I have been reading on my desktop screen. The software is free and so are many books. But it is wise to check all prices before buying because sometimes the Kindle version of a book is cheaper, sometimes the paperback, sometimes even the hardback. Kindle for PC




TRB

Creeping Islam

Creeping Islam

Unfortunately, there IS a "professional left", just as there is a "professional right". Just as many of "the masses" blindly follow Rush, Glenn, FauxNews, et al, so some on the left blindly follow anything that is "left" without regard for whether or not it is factually correct.




The specific Christian Crusades with the aim of regaining control of the "Holy Land" from Islam, were a series of military campaigns (mostly) sanctioned by the Catholic Church, which took place over a period of nearly 200 years from around 1095 to around 1291. There were other Crusades, some with the general aim of "compel them to come in", a "by any means necessary" approach to attempts to fulfill The Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20. Although there may be some element of this mindset still in some of the military campaigns the West wages, it is certainly no longer overt and seems to have taken a seat far in the back behind the controlling of land, oil and other resources.




Most modern 'moderate' Christians have evolved into a much more touchy-feely, new-agey variation of Christianity; most tend to point out the love of Jesus, and ignore most of the Old Testament. Relatively few take seriously the commandments in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about all kinds of things being "abominations" and killing basically anyone who does not toe the line.




Islam has not changed. It CANNOT change. It is a gross and potentially fatal error to equate Islam with Christianity, Judaism, and other religions. Islam is NOT a religion. Islam is a life. For most Western Christians, their religion is about going to church on Sunday, hearing sermons and choirs and maybe tithing, a little Bible reading, and then religion is put aside for the most part for the rest of the week, while people go about normal Western life.




In Islam, religion is merely one part; legal parts, political parts, cultural parts, educational parts also make up the life of Islam. It is impossible for a true believer in Islam to "put it aside" for a while. Islam IS life, all of it, every waking instant, and every behavior, every thought, every action of any kind is considered in the light of Islam. The notion of separation of church and state, if it existed at all, would be blasphemy punishable by death. Anyone who is in a war and is not aware that they are in a war is doomed to fail and die. Islam has been in a war with the rest of the world since Muhammad wrote the Q'uran. I doubt there will ever be a time when Islam is not at war with the rest of the world. There is zero intent in Islam to live peaceably with other religions, other cultures, certainly not with NO religion.




When NYC Mayor Bloomberg (and now Obama also) speaks of freedom of speech and freedom of worship and treats the building of a mosque as equivalent to building a church or synagogue, he shows complete ignorance of what Islam is all about. Governor Paterson of New York offered assistance to the proponents of the NYC mosque, if they would agree to move it further away from Ground Zero, in a show of understanding and toleration. Islam has no interest in understanding and toleration. This was their response. The intent of Islam, as it has been from day one, is to carry our their version of The Great Commission, which means that every human on the planet will be forced to claim to be a Muslim, or pay the Jizya or die. There are no other choices in Islam. In this sense ONLY is Islam a "religion of peace".




Throughout history there have been those who would conquer the world and be a god and rule over all. Hitler and the Nazis tried it, but his thousand year Reich was squashed within a decade. Islam is at least as dangerous, probably moreso and as an ideology has virtually infinite patience, lasting century after century. And in very large numbers in some parts of the world, always with the goal of encompassing and ruling the rest of it. There are still Nazis, of course, but their numbers are so few as not to constitute much of a threat. On the other hand, when Islam has well over a billion in numbers - nearly a fifth of the world's population - and growing daily, not to mention acquiring nuclear weapons, the world is in grave danger. How do you think WWII would have ended if Hitler had gotten nukes before we did?




Islam is not a race and people who oppose it are not racist because they oppose it. Sharia Law is a hellish nightmare of torture and death, especially for women, a literal modern version of laws akin to those of the Old Testament. In Islamic countries, you DO see dead people hanging from nooses because they were allegedly gay, or because they were allegedly adulterers. You DO see women stoned to death for the crime of having been raped. You DO see people, including children, with various hands, arms, feet and legs having been chopped off with a sword for petty crimes. You know this is true, you have seen it on television yourself. Read the tale of the Scorpion and the Frog. I assure, in all serious, Islam IS the scorpion. Do you really want to be the frog in the name of "tolerance"?




Hat tip to Catherine for finding and posting some of these videos on her blog, as well as links to the Middle East Media Research Institute and Creeping Sharia. But she is dead wrong about Obama having been born or ever being a Muslim.































Enjoy your Haraam while you can, infidel.




TRB

My First Orgy

My First Orgy

Okay the blog isn't as good as the title...sorry. I only mean this is the first blog I'm doing in which I intend to post copies to all my blogging sites, and since some of them don't deal with html tags, I will keep those to a minimum. In case you missed it, that...the blog title...was a bit of manipulation. Sorry. I really think about stuff like that and try not to do, but I did it here to make a point.

For anyone who may not know, Myspace recently made some changes to blogs, including removing the "reply" button so you cannot respond directly to a posted comment; changed settings so the length of your comment to any blog there cannot exceed about 4 lines or so; and no longer allow the posting of videos in comments.

A most interesting reaction to the "changes" Myspace made from some members of our little "community". Some are yelling that leaving the ship won't fix the hole, we should just sit still and wait till "they" fix it. Some say we all should DEMAND that "they" fix it. Some say the ship is going down and only a fool wouldn't jump in a life boat. Some have actually literally said, "I'm going down with the ship." A few have migrated to Wordpress. Most like it but I heard one complaint that when you comment to a blog there and a notification email is sent to the owner, your IP address is shown in that email. Some will not tolerate what they consider that breach of privacy.

I don't like it but I could live with not being able to post videos in comments; I don't think I can accept not being able to reply to a specific comment or having to make several different comments in order to say what I want to say. Perhaps the Titanic is not an accurate metaphor for Myspace blogging, but I think it is. I don't think the management there gives a rat's ass what "we" think about their changes.

This situation and the one about Google's recent going evil (by signing a deal with Verizon) is really interesting to me. Many bloggers at Myspace are making demands...over 300,000 people signing a petition to Google to help uphold "net neutrality". Though I'm sure any intelligent person knows this on an academic level; still many don't seem to have it in their gut; these are all corporations. Google, Verizon, Myspace and all the others are business entities called corporations. By definition, the primary purpose and function of any corporation is to profit. None of them are "ours". They belong solely to those who hold legal title to the physical assets of the corporation and, to a lesser extent, those who own stock in the corporation.

My point is that many people seem to see the "ungoodness" of such things but perhaps don't fully accept, in that 'pit-of-the-stomach' kind of way, that virtually nothing in our world can be any other way. The world quite literally runs on money, the making of it, keeping of it, making more of it, and what may be good for people in general is, at best, a secondary concern. Of course, far greater "ungoodness" arises from the monetary system than merely getting pissed about what you can do on a blogging site. Literally tens of thousands of people die every day that comes because of the monetary system. People in Africa, especially, literally starve to death by the thousands, not because there is any shortage of food and other resources. All such resources are abundant. It's because of the monetary system. No one can do anything if it "costs too much".

There is no such thing as a "free" blog any where. All companies who offer "free" blogs must make profit to continue to exist. The blogs are generally "paid for" either by bloggers "upgrading" to paid blogs in order to have more services, or they are paid for by the management placing advertisements in your blogs...ads, which other companies have paid money to the blogging site to have posted.

I will continue with this line of thought in another blog.

By the way, to all of you who are not familiar with me and my kind of blogging, I suppose if you don't like them you will simply ignore them; maybe argue some, but I surely hope to shake you out of your complacency just a little tad. Please?

TRB

Mosque Rant

Mosque Rant

I can't remember the last time I did a "rant" blog which means either that it's been a long time or my memory is getting worse. In any case, this one is just a rant. It's mostly about that stupid mosque in NY, and related issues I think the left has some trouble with. First, a few facts regarding that particular building...

It is a part of something called the Cordoba Initiative which was founded by a man named Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in 2004. If you care about the issue, you would do well to read the wiki on Cordoba House. Why was it named "Cordoba"? Why have they now been trying to get it renamed to "Park 51"? Although many other things are said to be included in the proposed 13-story building, it appears that a mosque is a must. Why?

Both the left and right, at least the talking heads on TV, are way to quick to react negatively to something the alleged "other side" has said or done (Fox News and Shirley Sherrod, for example on the right -- MSNBC on the left in this issue for example), not on any merits but simply because its origin is thought to be "the other side". I think this is a stupid reaction, unworthy of any thoughtful person. One of the things the left does too much is to WAY overuse the word hate, which I think should be reserved for persons, things, or ideas who truly earn the appellation. Simply not liking a person, thing or idea does NOT equate to hating it. Although there is certainly some "hate" involved in some of the reasons that some people oppose this building, I insist there are very good reasons for opposing it. My main reason for opposing it is that I consider it a slap in the face to New York and to this country.

I do not think that because I have that mysterious disease, "Islamophobia". I do hate and loathe Islam with a passion (likewise Christianity and all such idiocies), but that is not relevant to my position on that particular mosque. I'm told there is a mosque only a couple of blocks away that has been there 30 years or more. I have no problem with that mosque or any others, any more than I have a problem with churches or synagogues. I have a very big problem with THAT mosque because I am convinced that the major reason that inclusion of THAT mosque seems non-negotiable is the same reason the original Cordoba House was built in Spain...after the Muslim conquest of Spain... a symbol of conquest.

Even though there are a handful of Christians left who try - and sometimes succeed - to kill enemies like gays and abortion doctors, and some still try to beat the demons out of loved ones, modern Christianity in the Western World bears almost no resemblance to the Christianity of three to four centuries ago. I see no reason to think this kind of evolution will ever occur in Islam, certainly not within our lifetimes. The oft-stated goal of Islam is to quit literally conquer the entire world for Allah. This means that the intent, the goal is to make every human on the planet proclaim themselves Muslim, or pay the Jizya, or die. There are no other choices. I think this will be the goal of Islam as long as Islam exists.

According to a story published last year, "...there are around 85 Sharia courts currently operating in Britain, of which merely a dozen work within the British legal system." Source. Really? How many Sharia courts are in the US so far? I'm not aware of any. Yet. But remember the flap with Muslims demanding Facebook adhere to Sharia Law? Source.

Islam is not "just" a religion in the sense that most modern religions are practiced today. Islam is about absolute control of every facet of life, cultural, political, religious, economic, and everything else you can think of. There is NO "tolerance" in Islam except when a superior power enforces it. Islam is a very real "Borg". You will be assimilated or annihilated. I don't think that the passage of lifetimes and generations and centuries and millennia does anything to dilute this in any way. To the mujahid martyr, it is irrelevant whether world domination is achieved in his lifetime or whether he is blessed to die in the service of that goal.

I had hoped to read a "presentation" the aforementioned Imam made in 2007, called "The Role of Islamic States in a Globalized World." Interfaith Dialogue Against the Secularization of Nature, Moral Values and Politics. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Institute of Islamic Understanding – Malaysia, July 17-18, 2007. mentioned on this page, but I could find no link. "...Dialogue Against ...Secularization..."? Really? How welcome do you think non-believers might be if Islam ruled? I did find something called the Iranian Secular Society over on the Facepalm. A glimmer of hope! But it seems the society is based in the UK. Surprise.

I'm not completely ignorant of the past history of Islam. I know there was a kind of "enlightenment" period in which many Islamic scholars made great contributions to science and medicine, etc. There were voices of reason...check out al-Razi on religion. But that was like... a thousand years ago.

Can the proposed mosque be stopped? Highly unlikely. I think that was a consideration as well. As far as I can tell there is nothing that could legally be done to prevent it. It's private property. They can build whatever they like. Nothing short of the government invoking eminent domain could probably stop it. That's about as likely as a visit from Marvin the Martian. I can hope that I am wrong about the future course of Islam. Is this hope? I look at some European countries which, in their eagerness to embrace "tolerance" and multiculturalism, even consider Sharia law...and I REALLY hope I'm wrong. As an atheist I'd much rather deal with the Christianity we currently have than the Islam of the Middle East.

Tolerance is a great thing...to a point. To the point where you become a doormat.

"Consider the source" is usually good advice...so is "Don't shoot the messenger".

And now for something completely retro... I used to correspond often with a feller who is an anarchist and a bit of a Luddite and I read his magazine. Somehow we lost touch and I recently discovered that someone has done a wiki page on both Fred Woodworth and The Match! Irony.

TRB