Have you heard about the agnostic and the atheist in a confrontation in the street? The agnostic says, "Gee, I'm not really sure if there's a god, or if there is, what form it takes."

The atheist says, "You f-ing moronic lunatic, of course there's no god! Death to uncertainty! Disbelieve or die! Are you still uncertain?" When the agnostic says, "Long live uncertainty," the atheist pulls out his gun and shoots the agnostic in the chest.

To which the agnostic responds as he falls down and sees his wounds, "Death to atheists!" and shoots the atheist in the chest. Both are dead within minutes.

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Today I read about an evangelical Christian pastor, Rev. Boyd, who has a megachurch in Minnesota...and by the end of the article, I had a great deal of respect and admiration for him.

I had read Boyd's book, "Letters From a Skeptic" several years ago at the urging of a Christian friend (it didn't convert me). And today's article did not convert me to a Christian, but absolutely converted my (unfair) blanket assumptions/stereotypes of the heads of "mega" Christian evangelical churches. It seems that Rev. Boyd doesn't want to get involved in politics and actually believes in the separation of church and state. (!!!) It seems that Rev. Boyd and I can respectfully disagree with each other on topics like abortion and homosexuality...imagine that!

In other religious news, people are getting very, very tired of the middle east miasma, and the billions of dollars we are spending there with no peace or stability in sight. Here is some evidence, background first. One of my friends is a former spook; he was a Navy man with years of decorated service to the Naval Security Group, often involved in clandestine cryptology activities in conjunction with the NSA. He still has lots of military and intelligence contacts and today he mentioned a couple ideas have been apparently floating around as trial balloons. Here is one example: (if you like or dislike this idea, feel free to comment, but remember, I am just the messenger.)

The idea is to "officially" declare (ostensibly with a very, very quiet wink towards Israel) that we are no longer supporting Israel financially or militarily. And that such an announcement would cause several middle eastern nations to launch attacks against Israel. And that after such attacks, Israel would still have massive firepower capabilities and through air attacks, would end the nuclear weapons program of every middle-eastern country that has one. And the U.S. could say to those countries that formerly had nuclear programs, "sorry fellas, about all your nuclear programs; we don't control Israel and don't support them anymore."

Then chaos, then maybe peace, and then maybe a Marshall-plan type rebuilding of the middle east. Meantime, better buy a Tesla, because we will be looking at $10 per gallon gas.