I was just a bit baffled by how this was quite an interesting take on the “Power of Irony” that just suddenly turns into being about religion at the last minute!

You are correct. It is abrupt and somewhat out of place. At the time I wrote that, I was more concerned with never letting this blog wander off topic. I had to find a way to tie it in. If I were writing it today, I would have left that last part off. If I ever do a best-of page or something, I may reprint the above without the last four paragraphs.

Although it is a too-abrupt shift, it is actually the whole reason I sat down to write this particular article. If fundamentalism didn’t exist, then it wouldn’t be available as a tool for irony to smack us with.

In your original article you talk about standing in an open field tempting the lightning to strike you. Only someone who is strong with the stupid would be caught dead in such a situation.

May the stupid be with you…err not so much.

TBH I’d agree in thinking we would probably all be better off these days without religion. I’m not strongly opposed to it, I understand it probably helped drive us forward a lot in the distant past, but I’m surprised so many people still believe it blindly and without challenge in modern times, especially to the point of taking lives.

The only thing is, I don’t see why the angle of the post changed so suddenly from what was quite an interesting start!

I’m not the slightest bit intimidated by your beliefs. I don’t know where you got that impression. What you believe, as long as you don’t intrude those beliefs into government, has no effect on me whatsoever.

It’s looks like we’re in agreement on the issue of religious radicals.

So Ron, how is this? I hope you will notice that I didn’t mention any particular group, just those who would use religion as an excuse to kill. Ron, I don’t disagree with you in total, just the use of the word fundamentalist. Religious Zealots would be the term I would use but then I’m not you.

This site is about religious fundamentalism. That is what causes most of the misery in this world. Somebody having a strong opinion about syntax is hardly in the same category.

Apparently, though, you are incapable of reading text that is properly capitalized. So let me spell it out slowly and carefully for you:

Nowhere in that post did I advocate wiping out Islam!

I sincerely doubt your ability to peacefully coexist with any neighbors (Muslim or otherwise), if you are incapable of understanding what another person has written.

Right there, Ron, when you refuse to read Merrit’s post for lack of capitalization – you are the fundamentalist there.

When you say, wipe out Islam, blaming religion for some people-gone-wrong, you excuse fundamentalists of all kind.

To me, as a Hindu living with Muslim neighbors in houses on all sides, peacefully coexisting, celebrating life together, the rest of the world where people stereotype people, and spread hate (and that includes you), is a sad, sad place.

What is lawful is not always constitutional. I have presented the correct, unadulterated version of the Pledge of Allegiance.

I’d respond to your comment, but I couldn’t get through it. If you don’t respect your readers enough to use proper capitalization, then your ideas aren’t worth reading.