The Shadow On The Earth

"The Church says the earth is flat. But I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than the Church."

- Ferdinand Magellan

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Just a few minutes ago, ISIS, that black flag-bearing despicable group of religious extremists, the definition of pure evil, executed journalist Steven Sotloff in their preferred manner: public beheading. Live on tv.

We all knew this was coming. This is what they do, they kidnap Westerners in Syria and Iraq, mostly journalists (the only individuals with the balls to voluntarily be over there right now) and they hold them for ransom. Then they go rob Iraqi banks, conquer entire towns, slaughter entire groups of people in the name of a pure form of Islam that hasn't existed since the 7th century knowing full well that the only people capable of stopping them is the US Army. They know this, so their only defense (besides America's own hesitation) is showing these kidnapped journalists on a youtube video, and threatening to cut off their heads if America intervenes. And this is nothing new. This depraved asshole who is thankfully long dead Zarqawi was doing the same thing this time 10 years ago, at the height of the US invasion.

And it didn't work then, and it won't work now. For even though one of the cowardly masked scumbags threatened the life of Sotloff weeks ago if America intervened in their conquest, well, America intervened. We bombed the shit out of a perimeter of ISIS men who had surrounded a town in northern Iraq, causing death and famine in their siege. And it worked. Thousands of lives were saved from hunger and inevitable massacre. It was thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens' lives, or the life of one American journalist.

And I can't even imagine what Sotloff's family is and was going through. I can't imagine, the prayers of his mother, in vain no doubt, that Obama would not authorize any military strikes, and her awful cringe, her personal horror when he did, when she heard that America decided to go ahead and reign hellfire from the sky onto these atrocious excuses for human beings. For she knew what was coming next, what just indeed took place.

And that is the problem with religion. I believe that religion by nature is pure selfishness. It is selfishness in the hearts and minds of ISIS, that leads their belief that God is on THEIR side. Sure they're willing to die, or be martyred, but make no mistake... they're doing it so freely and willingly because they truly believe that something better, paradise if you will, awaits them. That  and many virgins. Religion constantly sells the idea that it really is all about you. That this Creator of the Universe actually knows you, died for you, and gives a fuck about you.

It was love for a child, selfish love at that, that made Sotloff's mother appeal to the leader of ISIS, this walking Satan of a person named al-Baghdadi, for him to not slaughter her son. They say there is no negotiating, or reasoning, of any sort, with terrorists. I say there's no reasoning with religion, which is, no doubt, the root of this terrorism, which is by its very nature, unreasonable. And so the bombs dropped. An entire town, thousands of people at that, were saved. And for it, one man was decapitated.

If there is a Great Creator, well, he or she certainly isn't a Modifier. He or she definitely doesn't care. He or she, if this is fact, created something alright. Then allowed it to go to shit. The Universe is a chaotic, random, and bloody place. It is barren, and harsh, and unforgiving. It is, ironically, exactly like the very place that the most arguably religious extremists in the entire world are currently slaughtering, decapitating, displacing, and crucifying innocent human beings.

In the name of religion.