Follow-up: Allah and all gods are impotent or out to lunch

"So if, as I have shown, gods not not have a human appearance, and if, as you firmly believe, the are unlike anything in the heavens, why do you hesitate to deny that they exist? You lose your nerve, and it is wise of you to do so, though your fear on this account is not of the people but of the gods themselves."

Cicero

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last post ended with the statement that America's leaders do not understand the threat from Islam because they don't know how serious and fanatic these people are.

Gets worse

I'd give it a rest, but things took a turn for the worse in Iraq, with two horrific bombings (suicide, I suppose, with 72 virgins waiting), a high-level American official resigning over the Afghan war, and, as if to add emphasis to the point I was making, two local men are arrested in connection with a plot to commit violence against Danes responsible FIVE YEARS AGO for drawing the Prophet Mohammed in cartoon form. But it was merely their act of labeling that provoked violence. Or was it something about the pictures -- perhaps also an element of dimly-sensed perceived truth: maybe we really are a bunch of ignorant suicidal psychotics? There had to be something that set them off, or else any pic would do. Maybe there was an original taboo supposed representation that you're not supposed to copy. Where do all the pictures on the Internet come from?

The freedom to draw a picture

So FIVE YEARS LATER, people would plot to kill those who committed what they consider a capital offense...and what we in the West take for granted: the freedom to draw a picture.

How many times must it be explained to Muslims: It is YOU who have to obey and respect your religion. WE do not.

Why the middlemen?

And if your god is so powerful, how come he needs the middlemen to to all the talking for him? Why can't he just broadcast to every mind at once? That would be impressive and convincing.

More important, why does God, Allah, or whoever need so many middlemen to do his persecuting, torturing and killing for him? Is he impotent? Or just out to lunch for a few millennia? Because he sure did wreak havoc in the early parts of the Bible, torching Aaron's two sons, dealing out plagues and horrors of all kinds, opening up the earth to swallow up rebels, and much more. He's certainly settled down a lot.

I recall Penn and Teller wearing metal helmets with lightning rods, the better to guide the divine violence they were asking God to show. Imagine that -- they'd stake their lives on God's existence. Nothing happened.

An unused weapon

I deeply regret that we do not use religion as a psychological weapon against our enemies. Openly desecrate their Quran. Have soldiers do it right in front of detainees. No need to waterboard. No need to lay a finger on them. Cover their walls with ALL kinds of pictures of Mohammed. Photoshop him on a surfboard, in a strip club.

But no, America won't do that. We do not torture. Besides, messing with their religion means they'd start desecrating Bibles, and we don't want that. In a war between religions (our military is overwhelmingly Christian), religion is off-limits.