Pete sent me a picture message this afternoon; apparently there are some flavor of quasi-religious nutbars on campus there, advertising their views with signs of some sort and, no doubt, flyers and noise. I couldn’t quite make out the writing on the sign in the picture he sent me, so I asked him what it said. His response was, “Well, we’re all going to hell, basically”. Nice.
This is one good example of what I like to call “ME-ligion”. It’s kind of like religion, but more personal. In a ME-ligion, your belief system boils down to this: “Everyone in the entire world is going straight to Hell. Except ME, of course, because obviously God agrees with ME.” And, one assumes, those who agree totally with and are willing to be completely and unquestioningly subservient to the individual in question.
There are ME-ligions based loosely on Christian beliefs as well as Muslim, Jewish, and some really oddball beliefs. Wherever you find arrogant, self-aggrandizing megalomaniacs you’ll find a new and more nutty flavor of some religion. And, hey, once you’ve convinced yourself that only YOU have the answers and that everyone else is going to be smitten by God anyway, it’s not a big leap to realize that it’s OK to shoot them or blow them up.