Why?
Essentially it all comes down to the tragic fact the victims — and whether they’re the murderers or the victims, they’re all VICTIMS! — are of a different sect, supposedly of the same umbrella religion that supposedly worships the same son of God.
The entire mid-East is quite literally one huge Petrie dish in which the most bitter hatreds are cultivated, as has been the case for thousands of years.
“Your religion doesn’t sufficiently love my god, and as my god is a god that demands I love Him, I must kill you.” (ALWAYS! A ‘him’ — Might I remind one and all that the exclusive function of sexual differentiation is reproduction. So, who is God having sex with, and how many little gods are there running around?)
Ya know, little children are the most amazingly delightful creatures. Their fertile imaginations can concoct the most amazingly imaginative storylines from the rarest of thin air. I know this because two decades ago I had two of them. If either had brought to their mother or me just one confection that remotely resembled any of today’s religions (“There’s this all-powerful invisible man who made everything there ever was and he lives forever and ever and ever and ever and I can talk to him any time I want, just like Mr. Bobo, my teddy bear, except I can see Mr. Bobo. You can’t see Mr. Weemo, that’s what I call him, because he’s invisible. And sometimes he tells me things, Mr. Weemo does, except I can’t hear him because he talks in invisible words . . .”) we’d have smiled, amused, and likely we’d have softly replied, not to chance diminishing either the enthusiasm or the creativity, “That’s really interesting. Could you draw a picture of your story for me?” “Nah . . . I’m going out to play in the back yard, to get some bugs for Mr. Weemo, okay.” “Okay, just don’t bring them into the house. And take off your shoes before you come back in.”
No difference . . . whatsoever. None. And yet, for millennia we have hated en masse, and murdered en masse, and tortured en masse, and ostracized en masse, and it’s all been on account of our very own Mr. Weemos, who talks to us in invisible words.
We’re now fully 9% into the 21st century. Our satellite telescopes have revealed there are more galaxies — not just stars, galaxies! — than there are specks of sand in all the beaches of our planet. And via those satellites, and with the use of our computers, we can, with reasonable accuracy, track back 13 billion years, as well as forward. Through carbon-14 dating we can, again with fair accuracy, date the age of a rock, or a mountain, or a glacier. We’ve witnessed mutations in all species, including the human species, and through genome tracking we know of a fact that evolution is a fact. (Just three examples: the brown grisly bear and the polar bear, and the dog and the wolf, and the races that are us; Caucasian, African, Asian, and everything in between.)
All of that, and nonetheless we continue to cling tenaciously to our superstitions and our bigotries and our very own Mr. Weemos . . . who talks to us in invisible words.
Go figure what defies any figuring at all.
