My experience is that the offenses and crazinesses of humans are about evenly distributed regardless of religion -- religions don't make jerks; it is simply that jerks tend to hide in religions as an excuse for practicing not their religion but their personal drama of assholery. It is really easy to borrow a bunch of highly charged vocabulary whether from the Sanskrit or from Thomas and use those terms to push buttons, stir people up, and so on.

Because many religions also deal in a sense of mystery it is fairly easy to use one to push people around by making calls to forces, ideas and entities that they have no perception of, but have to accept. What jerks do when they are working this scam is use those terms to instill fear and obeisance in others. Osama bin Laden, at least insofar as he is presented in the media, is such a jerk, and his Black Knights of the Quesadilla with him. So areany others who use the genuine language of a religion to breed fanatics for political purposes, financial gain, sexual opportunity or just some kind of weird power trip.

Fortunately, I can say with a high degree of confidence that neither Joe nor WYSYWYG are interested in that brand, which is not religion in any true sense anyway, but merely typical human nuttiness borrowing some veneer to hide true intent. That's not what Catters in general and these Catters in particular are about in any sense.

As for the historical overwhelm of the Incas, the Maya, the Polynesian, and the American Indian, this was not done solely by zealous missionaries. Don't fortget the overpowering presence of steel armor, guns, horses and square-rigged vessels. That certainly contributed to the overhwelm, and without those elements it is likely that a lot less destruction of native culture would have occurred. People who are not threatened physically are not likely to jump out of a familiar and working cultural framework into a strange one just because someone pounds the old Testament at them, now, are they?

Regards,

A.