Coming so close after the Richard Reid incident, one wonders if this time there is a hidden message waiting. Or is it just a final act of defiance, a thumbing of the nose by someone who can't stand to be out of the spotlight?

There's something heady about being "the world's most wanted man".

He's thinner, he's gaunter, he's paler....

Still as soft-spoken.

Still as deadly, perhaps.

Still the fanatic.

Of course, there's the rub; to many people I'm the fanatic. In defiance to Hume, whose arguments against miracles I consider specious and insufficient, I believe in miracles. (In a universe that appeared suddenly out of nowhere---literally, no-where, no-time, no-space...it seems almost obvious.) Yet few people agree with me.

Are all religious people to a certain extent insane? Stephen King in DESPERATION, had the priest who took up the spiritual guidance of the "boy who talked with God" (and one of my favorite King characters) say that all religious people are to a slight bit insane...

After all, we believe in something---beyond reason.

I think a reasonable case can be made for a Creator; I have bored you many times with the evidence of the anthropic "coincidences"; I think logical arguments can be made on the nature of that Creator (i.e., if the Creator has gone to all this trouble to make intelligent life, it follows the destruction of that life might be displeasing to the Creator.) and some of the philosophical implications can be traced in Mortimer Adler's ON RELIGION, and some historical arguments can be traced in WHO MOVED THE STONE?

Yet are we religious people inherently---dangerous? By owing allegiance to something beyond reason, no matter how buttressed by same, are we open to the charge of being no better than Bin Ladin?

Suppose I thought I heard a voice, that told me a little child would grow up to be another Hitler, or a Bin Ladin, or worse, an Antichrist in the sense of the OMEN movies? Would I commit myself for hearing voices, or would I obey it?

I think I know the answer; but I might be wrong.

David Letterman said, in his first show after the WTC attack,

"As I understand this, this was caused by a group of religious fanatics, who did this in the name of their religion. Their religion. And if you live ten thousand years, will that ever make sense?"

No.

Yet it fits a pattern of senselessness. The Crusades, the Inquisitions, the tophits stuffed with the bodies of babies sacrificed to Baal. Buddhism is the mildest of religions---yet a particularly odd variation of same caused gas attacks in Japanese subways just a few years ago.

Can I honestly turn my back on that? Some of the worst atrocities in history have been promulgated in the name of religion. The real Wiccans, the ancient Wiccans, not the ones who have revived the name and are unsure of what they are reviving, used to sacrifice people and bury them in the cornerstones of buildings.

Sacrifices used to be hanged to Odin.

Should we all be quarentined, brainwashed, kept seperate from the general population? Are we (those who believe in some sort of religion) at heart, fanatics?

Here, luckily, some knowledge of history falls into place. That what brings the fanatic acts are intolerance---and it is not just religious people who have fallen prey to that.

Thousands of people died in the Terror of the French Revolution, which tried to destroy the old religions, and only cynically put in their own religion to placate the masses. The leaders of the Revolution, like Robespierre, were freethinkers who had no time for a real God...

Millions of people were murdered by Stalin, who though he was raised as a future priest, renounced that for the soulless view of Marx. His purges topped Hitler's body count.

Hitler gave lip service to Roman Catholicism, but in private conversation with Speer and others, called Chrisianity a "Jewish superstition" and wanted MEIN KAMPF to eventually supplant the Bible.

Atheism has its fanatics also.

The only answer is toleration. It is fine to have a conviction that your religion is right, and the others are wrong---despite what some fuzzy-headed people will try to tell you. I believe that the earth is round, and the Flat-Earthers are wrong---I am tolerant of their beliefs, even though I think they are mistaken. I believe in both the Big Bang and evolution, and feel arguments against same are mistaken---yet I am tolerant of their opinions, just feel they are mistaken.

I do not want any fuzzy-thinking "all answers are right". That is indeed a worse solution, which will lead to a stagnation of science. If all answers are right, than what use is scientific inquiry?

Yet a free society must tolerate all points of view, and hope that the "free marketplace of ideas" will lead to the right viewpoints winning out. That's all a society should strive for...

A toleration for others' ideas, without endorsing them. If all societies had that...

The very idea "fanatic" would become a quaint, outmoded word.