Yes, I'm going to slam religion again.

A writer who I read a lot and whose writing I generally enjoy, stepped into a bit of a childish argument on an opinion column today. He's decided to boycott any and all Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam work.

Cat and Yusuf are the same person for those of you who didn't know: Stevens converted or whatever he did, in the 80s.

Boycotts are very effective IF they're enacted for very good reasons by large numbers of people. if, for instance, all residents of Nova Scotia or Alberta - or both - refused to buy petrol for a week to protest per-litre costs, it might make a reasonable impression. But 1 or 20 people boycotting Cat Stevens isn't going to do a damn thing to irradiate Islam or any other belief system. Sorry. Truth.

The current issue at hand is an assassination attempt against one of 12 cartoonists implicated by the Danish cartoons that were published.

Yusuf Islam is alleged to have said he supported some fatwa - Salman Rushdie in this case. Stevens/Islam's own blog denies this but given people's propensity to revise history when caught out or when it doesn't suit their current goals, I have no opinion on whether he did or didn't support or not.

For the record, the Danish government has not yet shown the guts to say 'to hell' with the religious freaks who presume to speak for their 'god.'

Even those of us who think religion is the greatest freakshow on earth understand the unbelievable presumption of speaking on behalf of a being the religious say is omnipotent.

The bigger problems are immense and cannot be affected by boycotts unless the entire thinking human population suddenly comes to its senses about religion. To believe that will ever happen is as insane as believing there are invisible beings running things on this planet.

I know the writer did not mean to spark such a debate - or maybe he did; I don't know him well enough to say - but spark he did and those who have weighed in (except for me!) totally missed the key flaw in their and the writer's argument.

Yet again, the ugly truth of religion reveals itself. Yusuf Islam is as much a victim of coercion as anyone else who shuts their intellect to the falsehoods perpetrated by religion and it’s ‘leaders.’

What the media pointedly ignored when covering the original story is this: Muslims had an issue with ‘mohammed’ being pictured – the fact that the pictures were cartoons is a side issue.

What the media did not also cover is the FACT that pictures of Mohammed – who probably never existed anyway – are readily available on the streets of Tehran and many, many other places; just as readily available as photos and drawings of any other supposed deity and for the same consideration: money.(I said photos on purpose: many people believe their religion's 'leaders' are gods on earth; hence, photographs. See the pope for example).

As in many other places, people, who, in too many cases cannot feed their children, are handing over the little cash they have for pictures of their imagined tribal warlord, who, if he even existed, was certainly mentally ill and who is dead over 2000 years.

Had the media covered this reality, that many among the murderous throngs had themselves paid for and possessed their own images, the stuffing would have been quickly knocked out of the Islamic argument. As usual, making sure the story had legs took precedence over a minimal amount of necessary research.

As long as humans continue to profess belief in ridiculous stories (flying horses, talking snakes, alchemy) utter, verifiable falsehoods (Jerico, some war outside of New York, virgins being inseminated by angels) and as long as they continue to place their ‘faith’ in liars (Joseph Smith, Charles Taze Russell, Ellen G. White, whoever recreated Horus as Christ) political regimes (Rome) and small groups (the two-by-twos, etc, etc) bent on social control, we continue to support an 'us/them' culture on this planet.We will continue to kill each other to 'prove' the utterly false. It's sick.

There is no pantheon of invisible beings living in the clouds; there is no old white guy who directs human traffic on this planet; there is no evidence at all that christ or mohammed or any other ‘god’ ever existed. There is MUCH, however, to quickly divest humans of these silly notions.

There is ample, endless proof, not to mention unending wars, boiling hate, putrid social and civil conflict, to convince humans to abandon childish beliefs in unseen spirits.

And before you all get your backs up and try to convince me how wrong I am and how I’m an infidel and going to hell, read up.

Read something other than your so-called ‘holy’ texts. Find out where your religion came from, who had a hand in it and WHY.

Humans are innately moral and ethical. This is an established, testable FACT. Religion makes us immoral and unethical and prone to perpetrating hell on our fellow humans in the name of impotent imaginings.This fact is viewable by US statistics. Crime is highest in the most 'religious' states. Look it up. Or surf this blog; I have posted the research and the tables.

READ any of the following:
Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion
Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great
Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation and this, also from Sam Harris

And may I say, if you refuse to educate yourself, if you refuse to read Dawkins because you 'hate that man,' you cannot argue. One who can but will not read is far worse than one who cannot but desires to.

One must know all sides of the ‘argument’ in order to argue effectively. For the record, yes, I have and I can.