Complex Numbers

Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

These days, it's hard to find just one, solitary thing that you can point to and say, "There it is. There is the Sign that the end is near; that we've reached the Cosmic Cul-de-sac and some asshole's U-Haul is blocking the turnaround." But here's a candidate:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/redandjonny/

Maybe Problematic Content needs to meet these folks.

There were comments about the religious slant of one of my blog links yesterday. Now, everyone knows by now that I'm not Christian; I make no secret of it. And yet, stuff like that doesn't bother me much.

Stuff like THIS religious psycho freak nut - this bothers me:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071128/ap_on_re_us/papa_pilgrim;_ylt=A0WTUdJ7CU1HfP...

A man who called himself "Papa Pilgrim" and took his family far from civilization to raise them according to his interpretation of the Bible was sentenced to 14 years in prison for sexually assaulting a daughter.

...

Hale insisted that he had a perfect spiritual understanding, his wife, Kurina Rose Hale, testified Monday.

Now, after reading the article, think about it for a moment - consider possible reactions and results had the guy professed to be ANY other religion. As it is, most of us read that article and think, "That guy was a psycho, and it's no reflection on Christianity in general." But what if he'd been Muslim? Hindu? Wiccan? I suspect there'd be a lot of "Oh, it was because he was <whatever>."

I don't doubt that there's a bias concerning our American majority religious inclination, and that bias can work both ways. I've known Christians who automatically trust someone because he or she professes to be Christian. I've known other people who automatically distrust for the same reason - and honestly, I've fallen into that trap, thanks to some bad experiences.

But then I realized:

People are people. Some of them are okay (naturally, all my readers fall into this category). Most are idiots. Some few are sociopathic, psychotic, dangerous. Most of each of those groups are religious in some way; some are not. But professed religious leaning is no indicator of what a person is like; it is, at best, a rough guide to a person's beliefs, and beliefs may or may not manifest themselves in actions. The converse is true as well, though we, as humans, tend to ascribe to a group the characteristics of the representatives of that group (which is why a lot of Christians distance themselves from Pat Robertson, and why many Pagans distance themselves from Silver Ravenwolf - they're embarrassed by those representatives of their religions).

Bottom line for me is, judge by the deed, not by the creed.