Even the crazies are starting to realise that choosing a young, (apparently) mentally handicapped girl as a victim is bad PR.

To any PC Christian or PC atheist reading this, this is what happens in countries that have taboos. There is lots of things in America to bitch about, but I am thankful to the founders that they thought well to protect the right to bitch.

We'd like to think in America this kind of thing can't happen. It has. Witches were burned in Salem. Sectarian Christian tribalism was the norm before the signing of the Constitution. And even after that religion was used to maintain slavery and sexism. And even up till the 60s, religious bigotry was still a social norm.

If it were not for the protection of free speech, and the opportunity for the minority to stand up for themselves, those things woudn't have changed.

Even today bigotry has not been completely erased, even with that safety tool. Gays cant marry. Women are having their rights assaulted by Christianity by the GOP. But the good thing is that because we don't have blasphemy laws, we can fight back.

But to say their can never be a future where we backslide into that same behavior is false comfort. While bigoted violence against blacks, gays, and abortion doctors is not acceptable via common law, there is an assault by the GOP to turn back that clock. It will not happen as long as the rest of us remain loud in our voices to consistently keep religious fascism at bay.

Humans fear change, and this is an unfortunate part of evolution. But lets not just focus on one part of the world that is 200 years behind the west by comparison. Bigotry exists all over the world. Japanese are most certainly friendly to outsiders, but still hold a beef with China, and do not like being confused with Koreans, and it is very hard for an outsider to be welcomed into a family via marriage.

We are still tribal in our evolution. They key to overcoming this worldwide, is to constantly spread the word that we have only one planet, and the world cannot afford any longer to focus on tribalism. It does not do any human any good to fight over tribes, when the world needs to collectively solve environmental problems such as pollution, famine and poverty.

The good thing is that the explosion of cell phones, and internet is making the monopolies of political and religious tribalism much harder for those who are in power to maintain. It is up to all, no matter our differences and disagreements, who value a more peaceful world, to fight back against those who would use a scorched earth policy.

Atheists should hold no illusions of creating a utopia anymore than we think Muslims, Jews or Christians can or should or could make the world conform to them. But we can point to the past in every generation our written history as a species, be it political or religious, when taboos are set up by the powers that be, we become more vilolent. When we shed the taboos and simply agree to leave it at words, and use common law, we see less tribalism and more pluralism.

Both Stalin and Hitler set up blasphemy laws too in the ban on criticizing the state. Far too much of the east is still stuck on this same honor crap, and even China still demands it's citizens to worship the party line. Can we overcome this as a species? The good news is YES, we can. But will we, that remains to be scene.

Islam is the biggest current threat to global civility, but not because we can erase it, only the spread of reason can put a leash on it, like the founders did with Christianity. But we must look at evolution prior to any written tradition of religion or politics. Evolution will always produce tribes, it is how our species protects it's resources and gains resources and competes for resources.

But the world is far too small now and what we do to each other has much more a direct impact vs the days of conquest where there was seemingly endless room for any tribe to expand. I wish for Pakistan and all of humanity to realize the same thing I have. No one is going to leave this planet and start another population on another planet. Using violence and murder and war to gain resources, may be part of our evolution as a species, but it is increasingly divisive and causes us collectively as a species to lose focus on our common condition.

Faith in anything, be it a state, a god or a business, cannot be a virtue in our modern world. We are not children and we are not in a school yard fighting over our parents. When we fight as a species and kill each other as a speices, people die, and the people affected by that turn and respond with violence. Now while it is true some humans are too far gone to reason with, the world is so much more connected now, that there should be enough humans globally to make the demand that their own powers knock it off before our entire species gets blown back to the stone age.

And to any Jew, Muslim or Christian reading this who does value peace, it cannot be peace through submission of the other, nor peace through making blasphemy laws. It can only be through the common law of accepting free speech and demanding non violence no matter who picks on who.

To say that is impossible is absurd, much of the west while full of believers, has had 2 centuries of secularism. As an atheist and a minority in a believing country, I see no excuse for believers, Christians especially, to bitch about my bitching about them, when they cant even open their mouths in Iran or Palestine or Pakistan.

And what does this say about your deity claim? You'd really try to sell me this claim that your god loves us, but demands we beat the shit out of each other because someone picked on him? And what would that say about this "all loving" god's priorities. His honor and fame is more important to him than stopping the religious violence in the world? 7 billion of us and his top priority is not being picked on? Hitler and Stalin made the same demands of their citizens in not blaspheming the state. So to Jews and Muslims and Christians, please stop blowing smoke up my ass about your particular god being peaceful and loving, when you don't yourselves want to live up to it, and seem to have a god who only cares about his own fame and uses as humans shields to avoid scrutiny.

Only a coward would hold his fans hostage and hide in the weeds watching you get killed. If any Muslim, Jew or Christian reading this wants the religious violence to stop, WE ALL HAVE THE POWER, to raise our voices.

I am sick of it, and as an outsider to all religion, you have a huge PR problem worldwide when you kill each other within your own religion, when you kill outsiders, when you murder gays or blacks or Sikhs. When Jews murder Muslims or Christians murder abortion doctors, what does that do to our species? Honor and revenge are two memes in our species lexicon that are words that need to die. "Justice" can only be based on the idea that we all feel suffering and none of us like suffering. "Justice" cannot be based on tribalism or revenge. We cannot as a species afford more division and the only cure is not to rid the world of our differences, we can only debate those. The only thing and the most important thing collectively is our common condition.

WORSHIP of anything is stupid, setting up taboos is stupid. Only until we realize that we have more in common because of evolution, will we understand we are not as different as we make each other out to be.