Wider View

I have gone through a lot of changes over the past couple of years. First, out of fear, I decided that the only path to peace lay by getting rid of Muslims, especially when they are migrating to Europe and settling into the cities with the hopes by the various governments that their burgeoning birth rates would result in filling the gaps that the Zero Population Group had left when the ZPG goals had been met and the aging population of socialist countries were running out of young and healthy people to pay for the elderly and shore up the socialist medicine, often called universal health care, financial bottom line. Chancellor Angela Merkel and leaders like her welcomed the immigrating Muslims with open arms -- and open coffers. Their hearts were in the right place while their minds were nowhere near the vicinity.

Muslims, purporting to be fleeing war-torn Syria, brought with them the young men who were fit and determined to find brides to fulfill their overwhelming desire for more children to become more fighters for the Islamic cause. To that end, the creation of a worldwide caliphate that stands in opposition to the European Union, the Muslim hordes descended on Europe, keeping to themselves in "No Go Zones" specifically for keeping Muslims to themselves and for themselves, except when they roam the streets looking for nubile young women, many of them still children in european eyes, to molest, rape, and bring back to their enclaves to fill their ranks by breeding and birthing more children to be brought up as Muslims determined to spread the Islamic Caliphate until all kaffirs (unbelievers) are gone and only the faithful remain to spread the Quran and Mohammed's transcription of Allah's words.

I spoke out of personal fear for the fate of mankind as the Islamic faithful spread their seed among the western civilized nations and infiltrated the bastions of democracy and freedom with their theocracy and violence.

I realize that not all individual Muslims are bent on violence and destruction. There are average people among the Islamic hordes who wish to make a good life, feed their children, and raise the next generation of average people to continue the legacy of family and community without ever getting into the jihad. After all, do Muslims not believe that the Quran is not just about Mohammed's views, but the words of the Creator of All -- Allah? Forget about the 1400 years of murders and beheadings that lie between Mohammed's faithful transcription of Allah's messenger, Gabriel.  Ignore the centuries of lives lost in the pursuit of the worldwide caliphate and the unwavering annihilation of the Jews in order to create Paradise here on Earth where the Creator of All needs human hands holding swords to get rid of everyone who has denied the Creator of All's pronouncements and must be destroyed as a gardener rips weeds from the carefully planted garden to provide room for the plants that will feed him and his family. Even the Creator of All -- Allah -- is not as all powerful as the only living Creator of All must have been to set the universe in motion and keep it all spinning, living and dying, as the mechanism of the universe spins on.

Who am I to spread more fear in the wake of terror perpetrated by zealous believers in the omnipotent and omnipresent Creator of All? Spreading my fears to the people only gives the marauding warriors of Allah power to sow the seeds of terror ahead of their hordes of faithful warriors beheading those ignorant of Allah's power and reach, making them that much easier to dispatch to clear the field. What irrational fear did the man unleash who told the future when he named my country, this United States, the United States of Islam?

My fear kept me from seeing the wider view. That same fear that hounded me as a child every time I was punished for going against God's word and that God was Jehovah or Yahweh, the same god the Hebrews followed out of Egypt and finally settled once again in Israel where the wall that remains of the Temple destroyed in ancient times stands and where faithful Jews and many penitent Christians offer their tears and prayers in fearful and hopeful anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the son of Jehovah/Yahweh -- or so we are told.

It is said that Mohammed was illiterate and I wonder how he managed to write the words Gabriel gave to him without the ability to read or write. Mohammed was a vicious and bloodthirsty war lord, but I wonder about that as well. The first verses of the Quran are peaceful and it is only the later verses that are full of violence and beheading. Shari'a law is as onerous and lacking in mercy as the militant portions of the Quran.

It makes sense for Muslims to learn the Quran by heart in order to brand upon their minds and hearts the words supposed to have come from Allah through Gabriel to be written down by Mohammed. How else would they understand it all? I also wonder if that is why the verses start peaceful and then become violent and full of death to unbelievers. Could it be that Gabriel was nearing the end of his patience with the illiterate herder who became a warlord or does the message of the Quran reflect the growing need for violent action in the face of failing efforts to live in peace with the fellow men?

The point of all these ruminations is that of the limited and narrow view. I know little about Mohammed or the Muslim customs and I freely admit that. I have read some of the Quran and have had verses forced upon me by Muslims determined to show the wisdom of Allah. There is some evidence of wisdom in the words, but nearly all the wisdom is as nebulous as the peace purportedly at the heart of the Quran. If there was inherent peace in Mohammed's transcription of Allah's words through Gabriel it is negated by the violence and history of Mohammed's life and the actions of Muslims acting on the transcribed words. One could say that Muslims are peaceful among themselves, but that is a lie. Muslims murder, maim, and destroy Muslims as frequent as the heart beats and the lungs fill with air. As murderous as Muslims have been in their 1400-year jihad, they have been more so among themselves.

Have you ever heard of the Sufi? In popular culture, Danny DeVito, in the movie, Jewel of the Nile, was found by Sufi and taught their philosophy of nonviolence and peace. Danny became a much less vicious and murderous thief under their peaceful influence.

Sufis are an unpopular and peaceful sect of Muslims who seek enlightenment through poetry, music, and dance (whirling Dervishes) and have been repressed and constricted for decades. If the Muslims want to prove their peacefulness, they would welcome and promote Sufism instead of treating Sufis like unwanted, sinful, and reviled Muslims and spend more time emulating Sufi culture because the Sufi have gleaned the peaceful heart of Allah instead of promoting more violence, more destruction, more murder, more rape, and more sinful pursuits that should be anathema to the Creator of All if Allah is such. Allah is the name of the moon god Mohammed chose as the name of the Creator of All, but maybe it was a words that Mohammed could spell and thus was able to transcribe in his illiterate way.

I've no idea what was in Mohammed's mind since he lived more than 1400 years before me. Although his thoughts and words were written down, I have my doubts that time, translations, and the meaning at the heart of the words the Creator of All gave to Gabriel before he whispered them to Mohammed to transcribe once he learned to read and write, and that does not take into account the 6 versions of the Quran written and passed out to people in their own languages.

My advice for Muslims is to take a step back and realize you have been had just as the Jews/Hebrews, Christians, and all followers of religions based on man-made religions have been had. Maybe that is why Islamic people have so much pent up rage that motivates them to murder, behead, maim, and annihilate their neighbors as they seek to destroy children and lives all over the world.

It is said, the unexamined life is not worth living and it seems the Muslim/Islamic life is not worth living at all especially when they are being used as pawns by unscrupulous powers that play on their fears and violent tendencies in their ignorance and slavish devotion to the worst version of the words supposed to be from the Creator of All's lips to Gabriel's lips whispered into an ignorant herder's ears to write down when he could not write and eventually became as vicious as any illiterate man attempting to learn the skill of reading and writing without a proper teacher or any experience in wisdom or facility with languages. Maybe it is time to take a broader look at these divine revelations and see them as just another version of man-made gods exerting their all too human vices on the ignorant and weak-minded people.

It is for this reason that I gave up my childhood training and all of my delving into hidden magic, alchemy, and religion and chose to become atheist. At least now I am on the right track at last and it only took me nearly 60 years to figure it out.

That is all. Disperse.

Have Faith, Your Belief is an Opinion

faith
Pronunciation: \ˈfāth\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural faiths \ˈfāths, sometimes ˈfāthz\
Etymology: Middle English feith, from Anglo-French feid, fei, from Latin fides; akin to Latin fidere to trust — more at bide
Date: 13th century

1 a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one's promises (2) : sincerity of intentions
2 a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust
3 : something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs
synonyms see belief

— on faith : without question


be·lief
Pronunciation: \bə-ˈlēf\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English beleave, probably alteration of Old English gelēafa, from ge-, associative prefix + lēafa; akin to Old English lȳfan — more at believe
Date: 12th century

1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence
synonyms belief, faith, credence, credit mean assent to the truth of something offered for acceptance. belief may or may not imply certitude in the believer . faith almost always implies certitude even where there is no evidence or proof . credence suggests intellectual assent without implying anything about grounds for assent < a theory now given credence by scientists>. credit may imply assent on grounds other than direct proof .

opin·ion
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈpin-yən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin opinion-, opinio, from opinari
Date: 14th century

1 a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter b : approval, esteem
2 a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge b : a generally held view
3 a : a formal expression of judgment or advice by an expert b : the formal expression (as by a judge, court, or referee) of the legal reasons and principles upon which a legal decision is based

— opin·ioned \-yənd\ adjective

Today's post is brought to you by the continued wrangling over religious in/tolerance in the military and especially at the Air Force Academy where the current commandant is doing his best to promote a tolerant environment for the worship of all faiths.

A friend who works at the Academy keeps sending me links to articles and articles about this issue ever since the ring of stones was set up for pagan worshipers to gather. One intolerance Christian put a railroad tie cross against one of the larger stones of the outdoor circle and set off the current debate. There have been comments about how our forefathers would view the military and would cringe at the incursion of religion into the military and government sites, but I'm not so sure they know whereof they speak. It's hard to say what the individual founders of the Constitution would say since many of them did go to church and carried their faith with them, but one thing is certain, it was their anonymous belief that a state religion would only tear apart the fabric of the country they created and endowed with their own blood, sweat and tears.

The purpose of the dictionary definitions of faith, belief and opinion above should be obvious, especially since the first two words -- faith and belief -- have figured prominently in all the articles about the current discussion about tolerance. When you get right down to it, the whole idea of a single religion speaking for all is an opinion and has no basis in fact. Some people have faith that one god is the only god, whatever they choose to call him (the Jews have several names for him, Muslims one, and Christians none at all, other than god or lord, which are titles and not names) and other have faith that no god or the anthropomorphic (made in man's image) representations of natural forces and ideas called gods and goddesses rule their lives. It is their belief that they are not alone or, if they are alone and life is just a finite point of existence no one survives and is blown out like a candle flame, that they are alone and nothing matters because we're all going to die. Then there are the more exotic religions based on worship of ancestors, animal headed god/desses and cargo planes that once disgorged vast quantities of food, material, weapons and people and then took them all away again. There are religious beliefs of many types in every part of the world and all of them promote the idea that one set of beliefs is the only true path to enlightenment. I find that difficult to believe that if no one will agree to wearing one color, one cut of clothing, one shoe design and one hairstyle there is hope for everyone believing in one god or one religion.

When you boil down all the rhetoric, gossip and proselytizing, it comes down to one simple truth: one size does NOT fit all. America has been in the forefront from its bloody birth because there was no state religion and freedom was at the center of what has become the most important country on the planet. It isn't because the United States of America is the strongest, richest or most powerful nation in the world and can destroy every other country in the world ten times over; it is because America is the only country that works hard to promote and maintain freedom: freedom to speak out without fear, freedom to print opinions and beliefs without fear and freedom to worship any religion without fear. The word is out; the streets are not paved with gold, but, with hard work and faith in the system and yourself, anything is possible. It's time the evangelical arm of Christianity got the message that in order to practice their religion without fear, they must allow the same freedom to others and stop pushing their agenda down everyone else's throats. Christianity is a religion, a set of beliefs that followers have faith in, but it is not the only religion and believers have neither the right nor the mandate to force everyone else to believe their way and only their way.

I have faith in the Constitution. I believe that following the simple statements set down by our founding fathers will keep us a diverse nation of freedom loving and tolerant people. It is my opinion that all this religious tug-of-warring benefits no one and that it will tear this country and its people apart, thus negating the principles on which this country was founded.

There's a simple solution: You find meaning in whatever religion you choose and allow everyone else the courtesy to find meaning in their own way. After all, the only person you have some amount of control over is yourself. I can say, from personal experience, that I have enough trouble controlling myself and I do not need nor do I want to control anyone else, except maybe my mailman, but that is a story for another time. In the meantime, follow the dictates of your heart and leave everyone else to follow their own. We'll all be a lot happier.

That is all. Disperse.