Old, Old, Old But Still An Interesting Quote

From Bill Mahre's book, "When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden:"

"People say 'I'm a Christian' the way certain politicians say 'I have integrity' like we're all suppose to be impressed and back off and kneel down to that almighty testament to naiveté and hypocrisy. When people brag that they have religious faith, I hear 'stupidity'. Faith is saying, 'I will ignore my God-given gifts for discerning reality and instead throw my lot in with the blind belief in something that was forced into my head before I could even think. Isn't that how we get adults in this world who fight wars based on which contrived fairy tale they were brought up on?"

"To hear people the week after 9/11 constantly talking up the need for more faith and the importuning of our God was, to me, the very definition of being 'part of the problem.' Of course, we in the West like to pat ourselves on the back and say we're more tolerant, and we are -- but tolerance is not the same thing as acceptance. It just means, 'We think you're crazy and going to hell, but we won't kill you for it -- we'll tolerate you. But you don't know who the Man in the Sky is, and we do."

"The literalness problem is compounded in religion by the circular logic of not being allowed to question anything, or else you're lacking faith. Christianity and Islam both have strict bans on of any sort of questioning of the religion itself -- or as the wizard once put it, 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!' In the Bible, it's 'Don't eat from the Tree of Knowledge,' but the meaning is the same: 'The stuff we're telling you is going to seem crazy, but just buy it."

"My personal savior is common sense. And as far as God goes, I prefer to believe in one that would want me to use the excellent brain he gave us all."

Good luck with the "common sense," Bill. My "common sense" tells me that it's not likely to save you or anyone else.

But who am I to say. After all, I'm just a stupid, ignorant, brainwashed, naive hypocrite with a blind faith in crazy, contrived fairy tales.

And what's more, I probably call people names! (Not that Bill's common sense would ever let him stoop so low as to do that himself.)