McGrath:

I spoke in haste -- please forgive my anachronism. My point is -- dates aside for the moment -- that the insistence on a non-secular basis for secular affairs has a lethal flaw in it, namely the oblliteration of self. Along with it comes a loss of personal hope, and a loss of responsibility. These things are not peculiar to Islam or any other group. But wherever they oiccur they are debilitating and they reduce the quality of life. Because the quality of life on the secular plane is deemed a distraction to the real goal of pursuing the myth. The snide superiority of cults the world over is based on this notion. Yet those who exercise it are still bound by the fundamental dynamics of human exostence -- they still eat, they still want comfort, they still hunger for admiration, still want to win at something, they would like to raise children. It isn't as though they have actually transcended material existance -- they just suppress it. And if I may say so, it is not as though they are actually following the trail of the Infinite -- they are merely getting spun up over someone else's picture of what that would be, as Kendall points out.

It may be true that actual enlightenment brings with it the transcendence over self. But pretend enlightenment does not. Pursuing such a pretense is certainly an inividual choice -- but forcing a whole society to do so, whether for the good of Allah or the good of Jesus or the good of Goofball the Spirit of Good Humor, is leading others down a very steep and slippery slope.

Kendall: That was then, this is now!! God told me we must drop everything and eat Fritos. Get to it!!

Love,

Amos