A pox on both houses

While I think I'm going to start saying, "As Emperor Manuel II Palaeologos said..." and then refuse to admit I meant it, too, I have to say that there are plenty of Muslims out there are as irony challenged as Papa Ratzi is apology challenged.

Basically, religion's big draw is the way you can use its more obvious rituals and so on to clearly pick out of the crowd who is "Us" and who is "Them". And once you've done that, the next step is to attack Them, of course.

If the religious would stick to good works and preaching kindness and thinking to themselves (that part's important) how they're the only ones going to heaven, we'd all like them a lot better.