Jason Rosenhouse on the pope's sad free speech comments

If you're late to the party, this story on Jason Rosenhouse's excellent blog covers the whole kerfuffle. I was pleased that he arrived as the same conclusion I did:

What is the Pope trying to say here? Why would you hedge in your condemnation of religious violence? Why do you respond to a vile terrorist attack by warning everyone to be respectful of religion? To me it sure seems like he’s saying the terrorists were justified in their rage, they just overreacted a little. 

That’s the real face of religion. One minute they’re telling you they are God’s emissaries on earth, uniquely qualified to hold forth on morality and the nature of reality, the next they are so touchy that the slightest insult is considered a provocation worthy of violence. The Pope says it’s a duty to speak one’s mind for the sake of the common good. But what if a major threat to the common good is coming from self-proclaimed religious authorities? 

Charlie Hebdo is acting to promote the common good. I don’t know what the Pope is doing.

Blasphemy is good. Try to insult religion every single day: it's your duty as a responsible human being. Religion is a fairy tale -- and yet it's tearing the world to shreds and preventing us from focusing on real problems. Religion is a great evil. Let's relegate it to the past.

More religious satire is what the world needs

PZ has a great post up today, tearing apart the idea that we shouldn't satirize those poor, poor Muslims. Why, they're a minority. Yeah, a murderous minority. As PZ says, "satire is not the problem". Terrorism is.

Go read the whole thing, but here's how he ends the post:

[R]ight now Dick Cheney is probably squatting in a vat of virgins’ blood in a secure location, sipping on a cocktail made with the tears of innocents, and chortling at the fact that his enemies are butchering effete French literateurs and refocusing the world’s contempt on Muslims, rather than hauling his ass off to the Hague for a war crimes trial.

Uh-huh. He's got that right. Saying that Charlie Hebdo had no right to be mean to Muslims is literally support for terrorism. Everything and anything can be the target of satire -- and religion is the finest target of all. When you lampoon religion - any religion - you are doing something constructive. Religion is for fools, and killing for religion is the stupidest thing a human can do. There is no god, people, no Allah and no grace. Religion is a magic fence surrounding nothing. Never forget that.