Some say "The penis mightier than the sword". Others say "Make love, not war". In truth, both are saying the same thing: that no matter how hard one tries to kill others, others have a remarkable ability to reproduce at a faster rate. It's evolution at work, and I never argue with scientists or lawyers.
However, remarkably, this is not the case for western society, specifically the far eastern western continent of Australia. As much as Mr Chris has done for his country, it seems that others are not following in his footsteps. Population rates are declining in this country (fertility rate 1.8ish), and we need to import ever more immigrants to meet our population targets. Further, it seems there are people in other countries ready to kill us. In fact, since their religion has specific clauses for limitless reproduction, they can even afford to send in some of their own to die to take us down.
Does this show that the sword is mighty? Arguably not, since it is really the concept that religion dispenses first, and violence second. It does, however, show that making both love
and war is more successful than making either on it's own.
It's interesting that when you start to look at religion as an autonomous force (which it is, through it's doctrine), things start making more sense from the point of view of the fundies. Your typical average fundie (stereotyped, not statistical) looks at the world as being plagued with sin. That's what makes them feel superior as fundies. Their reaction is inevitably the same as that of Hitler: start over. Ask their mighty lord to bring down floods. Programmers do it to their code bases, and it feels really good to start afresh. Accountants do it on a yearly basis, and everyone always has that mighty rush at the end of the financial year when everything is clear again.
Anytime you have a garage sale,
you do it by getting rid of all the cruft. It feels good to have a nice clean room, where clean is how you define it. It feels good to have a new codebase, a new car, a new world with new ideologies (or old ones, but
pure). It's a fresh start; a clean slate. You understand everything. There's a strong positive emotion related to purging. Is it any wonder that we have so many bigots (or pseudo-bigots, who think they believe in multiculturalism but really don't)? I mean, PR have been working overtime and people will stand up and oppose discrimination, but I doubt that many know
why.
Why is choice good? Why is Open Source good? Why is multiculturalism good? Why is a dirty room bad?
I submit that sometimes purging is good, and sometimes it is bad. I could argue this point very strongly and the choir would sing "Hallelujah", but no one who counts would be listening. Even if they were, they'd somehow justify that their form of purging is good. The important thing, in any case, is how do we
stop them?
One approach is to give them what they want. I don't think this will work, because they are fundamentally critical of everything they get. They're after the utter annihilation of every other religion on the planet, including the good ol' Cult of NULL. Shifting the balance to their side is going to do nothing but piss some other self righteous, gun toting, baby making religion off.
- Do not give them what they want
Another approach is to find them and kill them, giving up some of our liberties in exchange. Ignoring the fact that selling our ability to do illegal things is total bullshit, this approach has very little effect. When you look at the Bali bomb video, did you know the guy was going to blow himself up? I didn't. Even if everyone knew, there's not much they could have done at that point. The lower you set the bar, the harder they'll work to get around it. It's like that internet porn act. A total waste of time and money.
- Don't give up your liberties
At this point, most people would draw a blank. What do we do? I submit that the answer is MTV and porn. Let's strip their society of all moral values, like our own. If all their men spend all their time jacking off or having sex with their newly "liberated" women, who will all turn into chain smoking crackwhores. They'll all end up cowardly, limp wristed, selfish bastards who don't want children.
- Mould their society into our own
Remember: Make love, not war!