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10A019
Libricide in Florida
by Jim Davies, 9/7/2010
Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL and author of "Islam is of the Devil" plans a ceremonial burning of the Q'ran on Saturday, and so has alarmed the world. Even General Petraeus has asked him to reconsider, lest his well-armed troops be endangered. So I looked up the subject of book burning, and found there's been quite a lot. Whenever some people run out of reasons to oppose some viewpoint, they put a match to it instead. The act is an absolute denial of reason, a confession that the burner is unable to get through to his adversary's mind - or sometimes that he doesn't even wish to do so, as in the case of the Nazis burning books by Jews. Jones does offer "Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran" and they are worth reading. His site says "We are using this act to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful. We do not hate any people, however." The problem with both these religions, however, is that neither is open to reason; each claims to consist of what a supreme being, outside the realm of reason, chose to reveal. From Genesis to Revelation, for example, never once does the Bible present any reasoned proof that its God exists. Accordingly, it's real tough to get through to either Muslims or Christians on the basis of reason, or to expect either to respond with reasoned argument. Here, burning the Q'ran will be like poking a wasp's nest. Jones, like the Muslims he critiques, assumes there is a God, and - in his book's title - a Devil. This is 2010, and it's very high time humanity pulled itself out of such ridiculous superstition. Evil in the world is very real, but the source of it is very much human, and humans - not demons - bear all the responsibility. Mohammad Attah's team did not wreak its destruction in 2001 because a Devil made them do it, they did it by choice in the hope of advancing their religion - by a quite convoluted process. Their target was chosen because Americans had for 60 years elected governments that favor the State of Israel, seen as a primary enemy in Islam. Those Americans cast those votes because they wanted a government - itself, an archaic form of religion. The act of voting is the ultimate source of evil, and millions here are set, a couple of months hence, to repeat the act and so prolong its effect. That will persist, until mankind grows up and does away with the institution of government; then, the only remaining evil will be the suffering caused by natural disasters. You know, those things sometimes called "Acts of God." |
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