Koran Burning Preacher Wants to Protest Muslims - With a Gun in his Pocket?

The news about Terry Jones, the Qur'an-burning Baptist preacher, just gets better and better: now there's a "gun incident" for our amusement. Except that Jones isn't a very amusing guy.

This morning, Terry Jones was in court in Dearborn, Michigan trying to convince a judge and jury that the city of Dearborn should be forced to give Jones a permit to protest Sharia law outside a local Muslim mosque.

Can you imagine what the judge and jury will think when Jones tells them the "gun incident" isn't important?

Gun incident?? What gun incident? Why, the one where

The Facebook Hate-Islam Groups

Warning: Adult Language

Where does free speech end and hate speech begin? Is it OK to say, "Fuck Islam" or "Fuck Christianity" or any other religion? How about "Fuck religion"? (And let's not forget "Fuck atheism"!)

If you go to Facebook.com and search for "Fuck Islam", you'll find over 500 groups. And many, including several with large memberships, are Islam-bashing groups with lots of nasty things to say.

But just scroll down a bit in the list and you'll find lots of "Ban the 'Fuck Islam' Facebook group" groups. Or boycott, protest, demand-censorship, and so on. And paging down through the groups, you find "fuck the fuck Islam group" and even deeper parody.

When I first saw the "Fuck Islam" group on Facebook, I was up in arms. Although I am an atheist and don't care for most religion, I try to always keep the debate respectful (except in the rare case where I believe religion hurts or kills people or appears fraudulent).

So is "Fuck Atheism" a form of hate speech? I don't know. One comment I read says no – hate speech has to suggest violence, some sort of action, and this expression merely indicates contempt. I thought this was an excellent point.

On the other hand, this sort of speech surely doesn't help anything. It further divides an already-divided world, it ends dialog, and it angers Muslims (or whatever group is being insulted).

Should "Fuck Islam" groups be banned from Facebook? If I were in charge at Facebook, I suspect I'd favor free speech over censorship.

But I would never join such a group.

Hate Speech in Christ's Name

It's pleasant to stay in my own insular world, read like-minded blogger's opinions, and feel good about the slow but steady enlightenment that's taking place. But every now and then, I force myself to dig into the other side's writings and make sure I'm not getting a false sense of progress. And it doesn't take much digging...

Today I ran into one that just boggles the mind. It's called The Most Dangerous of Satan's Lies, and that "lie" is, of course, evolution itself.

I can understand (but not agree with) people who don't believe in evolution. But this fellow steps over the line into hate speech. He equates evolution with Satan, the most reviled figure in Christianity. Since all evil originated from Satan, it appears that scientists are nothing more than Satan's tools. Forget all of the great discoveries in medicine, technology, psychology, and so much more. Forget that most scientists are dedicated, honest men and women trying to make the world a better place. No, none of that matters. The blogger sweeps all of that aside and makes them nothing more than puppets of an evil puppet master.

Here's the core of his argument:

Evolution Destroys the Gospel

The most cleverly disguised attack on the Gospel of the Bible wears a scientist's lab coat. The Secular Worldview and its engine: evolution, contradict the gospel's definition of death. ... there can only be one truthful explanation for the origin and nature of this very physical, very human experience called death. Evolution's redefinition of death shows its real target -the Gospel. The fiction that for millions of generations living things died and became extinct before first man appeared and thus before original sin, cannot be reconciled with the Biblical definition of death. Scripture does not allow death to be passed off as merely a natural end to life. Suffering and death are nonnegotiable elements of the Gospel.

In other words, if it contradicts the Bible, it must be wrong. Never mind that the Bible contradicts itself throughout, and that many "facts" in the Bible are plainly wrong. Never mind that the Bible's authors wrote over two thousand years ago, and humankind's knowledge has expanded exponentially since then.

The author of this blog goes on to the real heart of the matter: If evolution is true, Christianity is false. Christ could not have died to atone for "original sin" if there was none. Therefore, science and Christianity are mutually exclusive, and (the blogger claims) Christianity must be true.

The tiresome part of all of this is that it rests on one unproven and unprovable assumption: that the Bible is right. With utterly no foundation, this blogger, and so many others, extrapolate that all of science is wrong.

It's certainly my dose of reality for the day.