CHRISTIAN, SHMISTIAN, MUSLIM, SHMUSLIM. WHO CARES?

Sometimes you look around you and wonder: "Now What?" There's so much information hurtling into our brains at the speed of light we can't help but recoil at some of the nonsense that's passing itself off as information and knowledge. Today our president went to Cairo to make a big speech about relations with Muslim nations. He went to all sorts of trouble to reassure Islamic people that America has no beef with anybody else's religion. Well, why should we? We've got some real beauts of our own over here. And isn't every fairy tale just as good as the next? It should be no skin off anyone's nose which fairy tale your neighbor commits his life to. Every last one of them requires a person to ignore logic, physics, common sense, reality and practical experience. So why would a president of the United States dedicate a major policy speech to dancing around all these fairy tales?

Who cares who or what some guy is praying to? What does that have to do with anything? If his particular fairy tale makes him feel okay, fine, just so long as he doesn't seek to attack you or your damned fairy tale. The government shouldn't really have much to say about this stuff one way or the other except that people are free to do what they please with their own lives, even if it means frittering them away on the pursuit of a fairy tale. We had some geniuses in this country once who framed our Constitution and the best solution they could come up with concerning all the conflicting fairy tales was the complete separation of church and state, in other words, getting the government out of the fairy tale business. It's just too treacherous an area to tread for a government that has other things, practical things to do.

But people are stubborn, and cling to their fairy tales like an old teddy bear that gave them comfort as a child. Then they get to thinking that this teddy bear is the best teddy bear that ever was, and that leads them to shout from rooftops and balconies that theirs is the only true teddy bear and all other teddy bears are false and hateful. Then they get to shrieking that those who cling to false teddy bears are pagan scum deserving only to be put to the sword or burned alive for their amusement. It's at this point where grownups need to step in and tell the kids to shut up and play nice.

That's sort of what President Obama was trying to say in Cairo, but he had to dance around the subject a little bit, knowing their were a lot of people listening in who were still tenaciously clinging to their teddies, seeking even a shred of evidence that the President of The United States was disrespecting their fairy tales and doubting the godliness of their teddy bear. So that's where we stand as a race of beings, with world leaders having to dance around ancient folk lore and teddy bears. In order to accomplish anything sane and normal in this world, you have to acknowledge the insane and abnormal in all of us.

It is hard enough to govern human beings, as strident and self-centered a bunch of creatures as has ever walked this earth. Now you add in the fairy tale equation and imposing order on the natural chaos of this world gets near impossible. Every one of us wants to be safe and warm, have our families well fed and educated and to live our lives in peace and dignity. At least that's what we want for ourselves. As for others, well, our record is pretty spotty in that area, what with mankind's rich history of conquering, enslaving, slaughtering and oppressing the other guy.

And to break through this barrier to worldwide human security, a leader has to deal with all our various religions, like it or not. To ignore them would be ideal, that would mean we have reached a level of maturity and sanity where we can look past the conflicting fairy tales and just shrug it off. But that's not the case yet and to ignore these things is impossible for any realistic person. The reality is that we are at a stage of development as a race of beings where we still recoil from reality and the obvious facts surrounding us and put our faith in the unreal, the unbelievable and the unprovable. Which is why we call our fairy tales faith and not fact.

At least we admit that much and there's no such organization called the Christian Fact, The Jewish Fact, The Hindu Fact or the Muslim Fact. They are called faiths. There's no denying that faith brings comfort and meaning to almost everyone on this planet and that much good and much moral education has arisen from all our various faiths. There's also no denying that much bloodshed and suffering has been perpetrated in the name of God, with no religion having clean hands in this matter. So presidents and kings can't ignore the reality of religions. They just shouldn't have to make such a big deal about them. Maybe someday...