Again this past week we have seen the destructive and evil influence that organized religion has on the world. In response to some ridiculous video produced by far right wing Christian fundamentalists in which the prophet Muhammad was supposedly mocked, Muslims stormed the US embassy in Libya killing four US citizens including the Ambassador to the country. The American embassy in Cairo was threatened by angry mobs and as of this writing demonstrations against the US are spreading all over the Muslim world. Indeed, this entire mess is the result of fundamentalist Christian nuts who teamed up with ultra-Orthodox Jews to produce a film that they knew would lead to riots by radical fundamentalist Muslims hell bent on killing as many people as they can in the name of Allah. This is what "religion" does. This what a belief in a vengeful God looks like. Those who argue that religion and belief in a Deity gives them comfort for the after-life and therefore they have "faith" in a God that will deliver them to eternal paradise have a right to believe in that proposition. Faith I guess is a wonderful gift that I as yet have not received. However, religious fundamentalist nuts of all stripes have no right to place the world on the edge of catastrophe.
The main push behind the video was from Christian right wingers that want to provoke a mid-East war because it will fit into their theological predictions of Armageddon the Middle East bringing about the rapture of the Church lifting them up eternal bliss. Of course the mostly uneducated and crazy Arab Street buys into the goading and here we are today. My mother was a very wise woman who was spiritual and not religious. She saw first hand the corruption in the Catholic Church way before others noticed. Maybe it was because she had a brain and questioned things and didn't blindly follow. She had a favorite expression: Religion is the root of all evil. She was right.