mental Cheerios

Watching a poorly-edited public broadcast essay on Mohammed last night, it crossed my mind...

-- I wonder if religion would be less galling if it were less good.

-- Reaching for the stars, any sensible person will touch the earth, but I have my doubts that enshrining the earth amounts to reaching for the stars. It's just a doubt. I don't know.

-- Is it because I live in a Christian culture that, while watching TV, I found myself thinking Mohammed, as a prophet of Islam, was just plain more interesting than Jesus? A wife and kids and a sense that everyone might come together beneath a single, unrestrictive roof. Somehow the old palindrome comes to mind: "A man. A plan. A canal: Panama."

-- Feeling that oh-well sadness that creeps in where the principles are delicious and the facts fill up with bitter bile. Poor old communists. Poor old Christians. Poor old Muslims. Poor old Buddhists. Poor old industrialists. Poor old ... poor old whoever, leg-hold-trapped by goodness and improvement. Is making a choice really that scary?

-- I am still waiting with the insistence of some obstreperous convert for the line of ornate and illuminated text that reports "and Jesus/Mohammed/whoever laughed." How can you trust a man who doesn't laugh? It's just a personal bit of bias.

So much for the mental Cheerios of the morning.