This video was made to give a taste of a forthcoming book, The Last Testament: A Memoir by God with David Javerbaum, which  will be published by Simon & Schuster on November 1, 2011.

We’ll post a review of it on that day.

The article we quote here, by James Heiser at The New American, is about Christian women in Islamic states being raped by Muslim men who all too easily get away with it. The rapists’ motive, in addition to lust, is often (the writer says ) to force the victim to convert to Islam.

We post this information not because we are in the least bit sympathetic to Christianity (though generally these days Christianity is not a violent or persecuting religion like Islam), but because we want to show how harm and misery is caused by the existence of religion as such. 

We do not imagine that if religion died out  there would be no more wars, massacres, oppression, persecution. We do not allege that religion is the cause of evil in human nature, but that historically religion has most persistently given rise to, and used to justify, wars, massacres, oppression, persecution.

It has also been, and continues to be, the cause of blighting unhappiness in the private lives of uncountable millions of individuals.

For Zubaida Bibi, a Christian woman working in a garment factory in the Korangi Industrial Area of Karachi, Pakistan, the workday on October 12 at Crescent Enterprises probably began like most. Her job as a custodian helped make it possible for her to care for her children. But before her shift was over, a Muslim worker at the factory attempted to rape her, and then slit her throat, leaving four orphans without a mother to care for them. And the case of Zubaida Bibi is far from unique: In Pakistan, the phenomena of Islamic men raping Christian women is becoming more common. …

On October 12, 2011, during duty hours, Zubaida Bibi entered to clean factory bathrooms when one Muslim employee named Mohammad Asif followed her and locked door behind him.

When Mohammad Asif attempted to sexually assault Zubaida Bibi, she cried for help [upon] which Mohammad Asif took out a dagger and slit [her] throat.

The factory management called [for] police help and Mohammad Asif was arrested …

One might want to imagine that the case of Zubaida Bibi was isolated, or that the assault and murder of this woman had nothing to do with the religious beliefs of the alleged murderer and his victim. However, the truth is that in Islamic societies such as Pakistan, it is not at all uncommon for Muslims to get away without punishment for raping Christian women. …

Many Christian girls are raped … in Pakistan. … [They] are particularly vulnerable to these types of crimes because Muslim authorities are reluctant to protect them when their rights are violated by Muslims. …

The president of the Pakistan Christian Congress, Dr. Nazir Bhatti, told us, “The incidents of rape and enforced conversion of Christian women to Islam is rising every year. 99.9% of rape cases go unreported in Pakistan… If a Muslim man rapes a Christian girl, then he easily forces her to convert to Islam, marries her and covers up his heinous crime of rape under Islamic law. Some cases of rapes of Christian women are reported, but the majority of such rapes are never reported.” …

There are rising incidents of sexual harassment against Christian women workers on workplaces in Pakistan which go unreported due to cultural and social values. The influential Muslims feel free to kidnap and rape Christian women in Pakistan where Islamic laws protect culprits. In kidnap and rape cases against Christian women, the Muslim culprits walk free from [the] courts …

A report from the Barnabas Fund was released in September, detailing the widespread problem in Pakistani society of Muslim men kidnapping Christian girls and forcing them to marry the very men who abducted them. According to the report, the horrifying tragedy of such a crime is played out hundreds of times every year in Pakistan:

“The abduction and forced conversion to Islam of Christian girls who are then married against their will to their captors is a disturbing and growing trend in Pakistan; it is estimated that there are over 700 cases every year.” …

The forced conversions and marriages are often carried out by influential Muslim families who threaten and severely beat the young girls to frighten them into compliance …

One father was told by police to “forget his daughters” after the two Christian sisters were abducted, raped and forcibly converted in Faisalabad in May.

Even when a captive does manage to escape, it is by no means the end of her suffering. If a woman leaves her new Muslim family and Islam to return to her Christian background, she is considered an apostate — even though she was forcibly converted — and is therefore liable to be killed. …

The horrifying case of the murder of Zubaida Bibi is made all the more terrifying by the commonality of the crime which motivated it. Foreign intervention cannot bring about a change in a society which is so fundamentally influenced by a religion which justifies such crimes; but for those who do not yet live under Islam, Bibi’s death is a powerful reminder that the religion embraced by an individual — or a society — shapes the entire lives of those who adhere to that religion.

Yes, unless the individual walks away from it, which is a very difficult thing to do in countries where the majority and the ruling power are Muslim. We know of a few who have done it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one: with extraordinary intellect, courage, and pertinacity she escaped from Islam and became a star in the West. But perhaps she is too exceptional to be an example for many others to follow.

Please read here the amazing story of this great atheist and free marketeer – and then read her books.

The Egyptian military joined a mob attack on a peaceful protest by Copts. Some victims were deliberately run over. The picture shows a man whose skull was crushed by an army vehicle.

This report, dated 10-10-2011, comes from the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA):

For the second time in five days military and police forces forcibly dispersed Coptic protesters. 24 Copts were killed today and over 300 injured. The numbers could rise dramatically as many bodies are still unidentified and disfigured beyond recognition. …

There were discrepancies between reports from the official State-owned TV and independent TV stations. Al-Hayat confirmed that army armored vehicles went into Maspero “in a strange way” and ran over the protesters. A video clip of the armored vehicles running amok through the 150,000 protesters was shown on Al-Arabia TV. Egyptian State-run TV said that Coptic protesters killed 3 soldiers and injured 20. They gave no numbers for the fallen or injured Copts. …

The story that the Copts had killed three soldiers was made up by Egyptian State Television, and later withdrawn.

“Today occurred a massacre of the Copts,” said Coptic priest, Father Filopateer Gamil …

According to witnesses, the army forces were waiting for the Coptic rally to arrive at Maspero, near the state television building. “They arranged a trap for us,” said Father Filopateer. “As soon as we arrived they surrounded us and started shooting live ammunition randomly at us. Then the armored vehicles arrived and ran over protesters.”

Father Filopateer said he saw army police and affiliated thugs torching police cars, to later blame it on the Copts. …

Copts announced a few days ago that they would stage a rally to protest the torching of the church in the village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan, as well as the brutal attack on the Coptic rally in Maspiro on October 4. Rallies were to be staged in Cairo, Aswan, Minya, Beni-Suef, Assiut, Suez and Alexandria.

“When we announced this peaceful rally we made it understood that it will be from 5-8pm and no sit-in and no blocking of traffic,” said Ihab Aziz, Coptic-American activist, who was one of the organizers.

But why did they think they could act as if they lived in a free democracy? Did they believe the claim by some insurrectionists that the aim of the Egyptian uprising was democracy and freedom? Did they think that democracy and freedom had actually been achieved?

Aziz said that the procession started today at the Christian populated district of Shubra and went to Maspero, in front of the TV building, on the river Nile. On their way, some Muslims fired live ammunition over their heads to terrorize them and some bricks were hurled at them. By the time they arrived to Maspero there were nearly 150,000 protesters. “The army and police were waiting for us about 200 meters away from the Maspero TV building,” said Aziz. “They started firing at us before two army armored vehicles came at great speed and drove into the crowds, going backwards and forwards, mowing people under their wheels.” He said he saw at least 20 dead Copts around him.

“The most horrible scene was when one of the vehicles ran over a Copt’s head, causing his brain to explode and blood was all over the place,” recalled Aziz.

He held out his hand, showing two bullets in his palm. “We got a clear message today that we are no first class citizens.”

No more than than they have been as Christians ever since Islam conquered Egypt by defeating the armies of the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century.

The same description of events was confirmed by Nader Shoukry. He said that when the Copts were trapped by the army forces, some threw themselves in the Nile and some just fainted seeing other people being run-over in front of their eyes. Copts ran to hide in the neighboring buildings, but the police dragged them out and assaulted them. …

It needs to be understood in the non-Muslim world that the reaction of the Muslim majority to the Copts’ attempt to repair a church is in perfect accordance with Islamic tradition and law.

Diana West writes at Townhall:

The unarmed Copts were protesting the destruction of yet another church in Egypt, St. George’s, which on Sept. 30 was set upon by thousands of Muslim men following Friday prayers. Why? The trigger was repair work on the building – work that the local council and governor had approved.

Officially approved! That is the only really surprising part of the story.

Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam specialist, …  catalogs the key sequence of events that turned a church renovation project into terror and flames. With repair work in progress, he writes … “It was not long before local Muslims began complaining, making various demands, including that the church be devoid of crosses and bells – even though the permit approved them – citing that ‘the cross irritates Muslims and their children.'”

It irritates us too, but we atheist conservatives are the most tolerant people in the world; so tolerant that the intolerance of Islam compels us to long for that terrible ideology’s complete and permanent disappearance.  

Given our see-no-Shariah media (and government), we have no context in which to place such events. That context is Shariah society, advanced (but by no means initiated) by “Arab Spring,” where non-Muslims – “dhimmi” – occupy a place defined for them by Islamic law and tradition. Theologian, author and Anglican pastor Mark Durie elaborates … : “Dhimmi are permitted to live in an Islamic state under terms of surrender as laid out in the ‘dhimma’ pact.” Such terms, Durie writes, “are a well-established part of Islamic law and can be found laid out in countless legal text books.” When non-Muslims violate these terms, they become subject to attack.

[The] Pact of Umar … governing Muslim and non-Muslims relations stipulates … the condition that Christians “will neither erect in our areas a monastery, church or sanctuary for a monk, nor restore any place of worship that needs restoration.”

Thus, this anti-Coptic violence, which for the moment has caught world attention, is Islamically correct. This is the piece of the puzzle Westerners fail to grasp. But Durie takes us through the theological steps: “For some pious Muslims in Egypt today, the act of repairing a church is a flagrant provocation, a breach of the peace, which amounts to a deliberate revocation of one’s right to exist in the land.” As such, it “becomes a legitimate topic for sermons in the mosque (where) the faithful are urged … to uphold the honor of Islam.” In Islamic terms, then, the destruction of the church is no injustice, as Durie writes. It is “even a duty to destroy the church and even the lives of Christians who have the temerity to repair their churches.” That’s because dhimmi who take to the streets to protest the Islamically just destruction of the church “are also rebels who have forfeited their rights (under the pact) to ‘safety and protection.'” As violators of the “dhimmi” pact, they become fair game.

It is sad that the recent revolution in Egypt had led them to believe that their status might have changed. The massacre has disillusioned them. As the eyewitness Nader Shoukry commented:

“People are being prosecuted, including former President Mubarak, in courts presently because they killed demonstrators on January 28. Now the military police is doing the same to the Copts.” 

So the “Arab Spring” is the same old everlasting Muslim season of misery and death.

We are libertarian conservatives, “minarchists”, emphatically not anarchists.

Having a libertarian bent, we like much of what John Stossel writes in an article at Townhall:

Here’s my fantasy: Libertarians are elected to the presidency and to majorities in Congress. What would happen next? Well, if libertarians were “in charge,” you’d have more freedom and prosperity.

Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you’d have been called crazy. There’s got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules.

Society would work the same way — and does to a large extent even today. “Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government,” Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. “It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. … Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.”

Yes. Common interest is the wellspring of morality.

If libertarians were “in charge,” there would be laws to protect us from foreign enemies and those who would steal from us or injure us. Today, by contrast, under the rule of Democans and Republicrats, we’re drowning in rules — 160,000 pages’ worth. Micromanagement kills opportunity and freedom.

Maybe if there were a way to have more competition among governments, things would be better. Competition forces people to become more efficient and to get rid of stupid rules. What if we let people take over some unused land in America to create areas with fewer rules, simpler legal systems, smaller government?

Stossel quotes Michael Strong , who with his wife Magatte Wade founded the Free Cities Project.

Strong said, “We want to encourage thousands of people to create new governments that have different rules, each competing for customers with the best education and best health care, the most peace and prosperity you could imagine.”

We expect that where government interfered least with the economic life of the people there would be the greatest prosperity. Where it had nothing at all to do with education or health, the people would stand the best chance of being well educated and effectively cured. Where it most strongly protected liberty, they would probably endure the least crime. Where it armed the people most formidably they might least expect to be invaded.

Are there any free cities along the lines Strong and Wade envision?

“Hong Kong and Singapore are the best examples,” Strong said. “Now they are among the wealthiest places on earth.”

True – and proof that small government, doing little more than enforcing the rule of law, works well.

And there is a free city in Dubai because the emirate wanted to create a financial sector …

And did, though the emir had to abandon sharia law in the free city to achieve what he wanted:

“Dubai was brilliant,” Strong said. “They looked around the world. They saw that Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in world in eight years.”

It’s what libertarians have said: Freedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.

As liberty is most likely to bring prosperity, why are libertarians a political minority?

Is it because many people fear it, and if so why?

Some want governments to be parental and care for them “from the cradle to the grave”. They think such welfare governments can guarantee that they’ll  be fed, housed, educated, medically treated all through their lives.

They could not be more wrong. The welfare states of Europe are rapidly going bankrupt.

And besides, what a government provides a government can withhold. To put yourself wholly in the power of a government is to put yourself not into safety but into danger. You are most safe when you control your own life, and the government does no more than guard your liberty. (And as everything governments do they do badly, it is wise to own a gun.)

Some need to feel that there is “someone in charge” – a king, a chief, a Secretary-General of the Communist Party, a powerful president, a Father in Heaven.

We don’t want someone in charge. Neither on earth nor “in heaven”. Throughout our earthly lives we want the rule of law, that wholly abstract authority, emotionless, fixed. (As Lord Denning, the British judge, said: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”.)

And we delight in a universe that does not have and does not need “someone” to make, maintain, rule, watch over, manipulate, or give a damn about it.

We know not to expect a confessed atheist to stand as a conservative candidate for the presidency. We simply omit the religious beliefs of candidates from the factors we consider in our assessment of them, unless they themselves make religion an important part of their policies.

In the present line-up there are a pair each of Catholics, Santorum and Gingrich;  Baptists, Cain and Paul; Evangelical Christians, Bachmann and Perry;  and Mormons, Romney and Huntsman. And Gary Johnson is a Lutheran.

To us it makes no difference what name their brand of superstition bears. We politely overlook the lot. If they’re not embarrassed to display a belief in the supernatural, we’ll treat it as we would a disfigurement it would be rude to stare at.

But when believers themselves make a big point of trumpeting their own nonsense and denigrating everyone else’s – that’s entertainment.

Send in the clown. His name is Dr Robert Jeffress, and here first, at his webesite, is what he has to say about … Dr Robert Jeffress:

Dr. Robert Jeffress is the senior pastor of the 10,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Dr. Robert Jeffress’ bold, biblical, and practical approach to ministry …

as opposed to other pastors’ timid, anti-biblical, and impractical approach to theirs? …

has made him one of the country’s most respected evangelical leaders.

Respected, that is, by the 10,000 members of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

He goes on to inform us that –

Vision America [an organization that works to get the religious into active politics] honored Dr. Jeffress in 2006 with the Daniel Award for his steadfast commitment and boldness in proclaiming the uncompromising Word of God.

Uncompromising? The Word of God is “uncompromising”? With what? “Uncompromising” suggests firm consistency, so by “the Word of God” he  cannot mean the Christian bible. Great anthology of fiction though it is, it’s a thicket of contradictions.

So what can he mean?

We suspect he means he is uncompromising in his scorn for all religious beliefs except his own particular set, on the certainty of which he will not be swayed a fraction of an inch.

And – yes!  We find next, reported here, that –

 On his show Pathway To Victory, Jeffress said that Satan is behind the Roman Catholic Church. …

Jeffress calls the Catholic church a result of “the Babylonian mystery religion” found in the Book of Revelation, and says the Catholic Church represents “the genius of Satan.” …

This is the Babylonian mystery religion that spread like a cult throughout the entire world. The high priests of that fake religion, that false religion, the high priests of that religion would wear crowns that resemble the heads of fish, that was in order to worship the fish god Dagon, and on those crowns were written the words, ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the bridge between Satan and man. That phrase ‘Keeper of the Bridge,’ the Roman equivalent of it is Pontifex Maximus. It was a title that was first carried by the Caesars and then the Emperors and finally by the Bishop of the Rome, Pontifex Maximus, the Keeper of the Bridge.

You can see where we’re going with this. It is that Babylonian mystery religion that infected the early church, one of the churches it infected was the church of Pergamos, which is one of the recipients of the Book of Revelation. And the early church was corrupted by this Babylonian mystery religion, and today the Roman Catholic Church is the result of that corruption.

Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s Word, it comes from that cult-like, pagan religion. Now you say, ‘pastor how can you say such a thing? That is such an indictment of the Catholic Church. After all the Catholic Church talks about God and the Bible and Jesus and the Blood of Christ and Salvation.’

Isn’t that the genius of Satan? If you want to counterfeit a dollar bill, you don’t do it with purple paper and red ink, you’re not going to fool anybody with that. But if you want to counterfeit money, what you do is make it look closely related to the real thing as possible.

And that’s what Satan does with counterfeit religion. He uses, he steals, he appropriates all of the symbols of true biblical Christianity, and he changes it just enough in order to cause people to miss eternal life.

So he won’t be voting for Santorum or Gingrich.

Next, on Mormonism:

“It is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity,” Jeffress said, “It is a cult.”

So he will not be voting for Romney or Huntsman? Right:

Jeffress went on to explain that many evangelical Christians will not vote for Romney because he is a Mormon and therefore not “indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God.” He even claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith “speaks to the integrity issue” as it explains why he has reversed his position on abortion rights, among other issues. … “He is not a “true, born again follower of Christ.”

Jeffress does, however, enthusiastically support Perry:

Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit with a fiery endorsement.  

Chris Moody, writing at Yahoo! News, comments:

Labeling Mormonism as a cult does not put Jeffress outside of the Southern Baptist mainstream. The denomination officially recognizes Romney’s church as a cult, and has done so for years. …

“The Southern Baptist Convention has officially labeled Mormonism as a cult, so this is not some right-wing extremist view. It’s a view of the largest Protestant denomination in the world,” [Jeffress] said. “I think there are a lot of people who will not publicly say that’s an issue because they don’t want to appear to be bigoted, but for a lot of evangelical Christians, that is a huge issue, even if it’s unspoken.”

So what is the difference between a cult and a religion? We googled that question and found no direct answer but this description of a cult:

1. Thinking in terms of us versus them with total alienation from “them.”

2. The intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to recruit and hold members.

3. The charismatic cult leader. Cultism usually involves some sort of belief that outside the cult all is evil and threatening; inside the cult is the special path to salvation through the cult leader and his teachings.

Which seems to fit Dr Robert Jeffress’s views, technique, boastfulness, and doctrine.

Here is the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of a cult: 

1. formal religious veneration: worship

2. a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also: its body of adherents.

And what is a religion?

1. the service or worship of God or [sic] the supernatural

2. commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance

And “cult” is given as a synonym of “religion”.

So the answer is: no difference. Mormonism is a cult, Christianity is a cult, Judaism is a cult, Islam is a cult, Hinduism is a cult, Buddhism is a cult …

But please don’t let that stop Dr Robert Jeffress. His fresh-faced vanity, his belief in Satan and eternal life, his chat about the Blood of Christ and Salvation, his contempt for the fish god Dagon …

All divinely ludicrous.

Dousing the fire on a human body

The picture is from the Religion of Peace, showing a woman trying to put out the fire on the burning body of a bomb victim with water from a plastic bucket.

This happened on October 4, 2011, in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, when over one-hundred people were killed in a powerful truck bomb by al-Shabab terrorists.

They carry out their mass murders, abductions, and tortures, in the name of Islam.

Islam orders Muslims to kill non-Muslims, but forbids them to kill other Muslims. The victims of this bombing were almost certainly all Muslims. Many of them were students. The lone perpetrator believed the students were not doing their Islamic duty, according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Somali suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people, including students seeking scholarships, in an attack near the education ministry was a school dropout who had declared that young people should forget about secular education and instead wage jihad.

Bashar Abdullahi Nur, who detonated a massive blast Tuesday that covered the capital in dust more than a half-mile away, had given an interview before the attack that was later aired on a militant-run radio station.

“Now those who live abroad are taken to a college and never think about the hereafter. They never think about the harassed Muslims,” he said. …

Dozens were wounded, including Somalia’s deputy health minister. …

The attack took place near a building housing several government ministries, and it was not immediately clear what was the precise target. However, it is not the first time the al Qaeda-linked militants have targeted students. In 2009, the al-Shabab group attacked a graduation ceremony, killing medical students and doctors. …

The group considers the secular education as a form of Western invasion into the minds of the Muslims.

Obviously nowhere near invasive enough.

A report in the Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune describes how a child in Pakistan was beaten and expelled from school for making a spelling error in writing about a poem that praises Muhammad:

Faryal Bhatti, a student at the Sir Syed Girls High School in Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) colony Havelian, erroneously misspelt a word in an Urdu exam while answering a question on a poem written in praise of the Holy Prophet .. The word in question was ‘laanat’ instead of ‘naat’ – an easy error for a child to make, as the written versions of the words are similar.

According to the school administration and religious leaders who took great exception to the hapless student’s mistake, the error is ‘serious’ enough to fall within the realm of blasphemy.

Faryal’s Urdu teacher was collecting the answer sheets from her students when she noticed the apparently offensive word on her pupil’s sheet. The teacher, Fareeda Bibi, reportedly summoned the Christian girl, scolded her and beat her. Her punishment, however, did not end here. When Faryal’s class fellows learnt of the alleged blasphemy, the teacher brought the principal’s notice to the matter, who further informed the school management.

In the meanwhile, the news spread throughout the colony. The next day, male students of the POF colony school as well as certain religious elements took out a rally, demanding the registration of a criminal case against the eighth-grader and her expulsion from the area.

Prayer leaders within the community also condemned the incident in their Friday sermons, asking the colony’s administration to not only take action against Faryal but her entire family. In the wake of the increasing tensions, Managing Director POF Colony Havelian Asif Siddiki called a meeting of colony-based ulemas and school teachers to discuss the situation. The girl and her mother were asked to appear before the meeting, where they explained that it was a mere error, caused by a resemblance between the two words. The two immediately apologised, adding that Faryal had no malicious intentions.

In a move that was apparently meant to pacify the religious elements clamouring for action against the teenage ‘blasphemer’, the POF administration expelled her from the school … Faryal was not the only one who got in trouble for her spelling error, however, as her mother, Sarafeen Bhatti, who was a staff nurse at the POF Hospital Havelian for several years, was immediately transferred to POF Wah Cantonment Hospital.

The reporter asked the opinion of some grand panjandrum who said that although he was unclear about the intentions of the girl, the word she had used was sacrilegious.

It would be true to form if they put the word on trial, and condemned it to some dire punishment, such as total extinction from the language.

All religions are absurd; some are more cruel than others. Since Christianity stopped burning people at the stake, has Islam any rival as the cruellest?

(Thanks to Frank for the link)

Sam Harris talks critically about religion, Islam in particular. He says the Koran is a “profoundly mediocre” book. We think it is a profoundly bad book, both as imaginative literature and as moral instruction.

(Thanks to our reader Frank for the link)

The soundly conservative but dogmatically religious Dennis Prager writes here about atheism and morality.

We quote:

If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than “yummy” and “yucky.” They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, “There is no answer to the question, ‘Why not be cruel?'”

Richard Rorty must be a dumb sort of atheist, and that’s almost a paradox. Most atheists are atheists because they can think and do think. But then this one is also a liberal, which means he is on the side of the emotions, not of reason.

Why can’t these god-botherers get it through their superstition-stuffed heads that all moral rules, codes, precepts  – ALL are the product of human beings. No god ever said a word to anyone.

Human beings don’t want to live in a world where there is more suffering than there has to be, so they repudiate cruelty. On the whole. There are those who don’t. They are cruel whether or not they believe in divine instruction. The Catholic Church has a history of extreme cruelty stretching over hundreds of years, and the Protestant Christians were no better. Christianity is a cult of suffering. And Islam is a system of relentless sadism.

All gods are cruel. Believers use the phrase “act of God” for events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, tsunamis, which inflict anguish on every kind of living body that is threaded with nerves. If, as they believe, their God made everything, he made bacteria and viruses, all the diseases, all deformities, all the torments of the flesh.

The Left – which is to say the liberals in America – have been preaching for half a century at least that no one should be “judgmental”. Generations have been raised to believe that they should not make moral judgments. As if it is possible to live without doing so. Even to decide to be “non-judgmental” is to make a judgment. Not to judge between right and wrong is to permit wrong.

Prager ends by asking rhetorically:

Without God and Judeo-Christian religions, what else is there?

Everything, Mr Prager, everything.

And if religions were utterly abandoned, a major cause of human suffering would be gone. Moral values would stay exactly the same.