Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.
I’ve got a couple of religious items conflated in my mind today. For one, I don’t sympathize in any way with the people who killed Americans and destroyed property in the Middle East over that Innocence of Muslims video attack on Islam, but I will tell you this, I get where they’re coming from.
It’s like this. Most of those people live in countries where the government decides what gets published. In order for that video to be made there, the government would have to sanction it. They have no understanding of our system of publication, so they believe our government sanctioned that video. You know how I know this? Because when I listen to how Americans talk about the riots, they can’t understand why these rioters would attack our government when it was obviously some nutjob, individual hater who made the video. Lots of ignorance to spread around.
Closer to home, I’m still getting emails on Jake Highton’s June 28 story about atheism, “Are you there God. It’s me, Jake.” The reaction is interesting to me, and seems a bit analogous to the riots. I wrote a column called “Filet of Soul” for four years. I went to a different church, mosque, temple, woods clearing, chapel, stake—you name it—almost every week. I represented every single type of faith that I could find, and I tried to do it without bias, despite the fact I’m not a spiritual guy.
In those four years, I presented something like 200 different sects and belief systems and cults to the public. And in all that time, not once did an atheist write in telling me that the represented belief system was wrong. I’ve written cover length stories about people of faith; never a hateful letter from an atheist.
When you watch the TV news or you read what’s written about people of faith or of no faith in local media, be very attentive. The people who cry “discrimination” or “hypocrisy” loudest are often the ones who should be explaining their own bullshit instead of calling out others.