Relevance

Be careful what you wish for. Many people have become atheists after reading the Bible properly and subsequently realising what it really is, i.e. one of many of our species many early attempts at science, philosophy and ethics. Like most version 1.0 things, it wasn't very good and we've improved on every aspect of it since then; mostly by inventing real versions of science, philosophy and ethics based on reason rather than fear, ignorance and superstition. Most moderate religious people have also vastly improved on these texts by "interpreting" the words in the light of real science, philosophy and ethics as informed by our evolving cultural, legal and political systems. So everyone should be happy, right? 

Unfortunately not. There remain millions of people in the world who insist everyone should obey their particular "special book" literally, this is especially true of Muslims who seem centuries behind the game in terms of reforming their own flavour of superstitious intransigence. This friction causes many of the problems we see around the world today, from the murder of gay people, violence in the Middle East, to the denial of basic human rights to Women. I wish more people on the left would learn how to detach ideas like Islamism (i.e. political Islam) from the actual reformed behaviour of most moderate followers of Islam. At the moment it seems as though many political leaders (Obama, Hillary etc.) are terrified to mention these things in the same sentence even when it's obvious that there's a direct path between a literal interpretation of the various holy books and killing gay people. Unfortunately it's only the clown Trump who provides moral clarity, he said this week that "The USA must unite the civilised world against Islamism", compare this with Clinton who said that she was against "radical Islamism", one must conclude that she is either very confused or thinks that "moderate Islamists" are perfectly OK?

The man who gunned down 50 people in Florida this week may have been a loser and a narcissist, in a land where access to automatic weapons is too easy, but he was a loser following the literal instructions of the holy book he claimed to believe, it's strange and slightly scary how most media commentators choose to miss out that last fact as if it's not relevant. What do they call it when followers of a particular idea or political ideology use extreme violence to silence opposition and create an environment of fear so that they can impose their will over everyone without majority consent? Oh yes, that's right, Fascism, we know a song about that don't we children.