Early Christianity had strict laws to enforce discipline on the less-than-faithful. It took centuries for modernity to intrude on religious belief and gain a foothold. What makes you think that since Islam cannot "reformed" to your liking by this time next year, that it cannot ever be "reformed?"

Socrates challenged the belief system prevalent in his time and was ordered to take poison for doing so. That belief system was superseded by Christianity which put Gallileo on trial for heresy when he insisted that science contradicted belief and had supremacy in a search for the truth. That Islam is currently undergoing a phase in which its followers reject science and modernity is not proof that Islam is incompatible with the modern world, but that its current adherents are.

Islam's current longing for a life based the "truths" of the 14th century will not be cured overnight. Christianity's was not.

Early Christians wore the same undergarments for years, because nudity, even in private, was considered offensive to God. Science was shut down whenever it contradicted prevailing orthodoxy with truth seekers sentenced to death as heretics.

Political systems bowed to religious institutions. The Pope had final say on who was allowed to be crowned king or queen of any Christian nation and the coronation was held in a church with a Church official presiding. Any coronation held without the blessing of the Church, was considered invalid.

Subjects could disobey or even rebel against excommunicated monarchs with the blessing of the Church. The Pope was the de facto ruler of Europe.

It took time for monarchs to gain the political and popular will to loose the bonds of Rome and establish nation-states as the primary organization of the world. It will take time for that to happen in the Middle East (which, by the way, is not the entirety of the Muslim world).

Right now, Islam has Christianity and modernity as its bete noire, as Christianity once had paganism, Vikings, Mongols, and even Islam to play the role of the barbarians at the gate. As long as les autres are at the gate, society must stand together in faith. Once the threats are diminished, society can gaze inward and fix the structural problems in its own makeup. Until then, it cannot risk disintegrating over internal conflicts in the face of the barbarians.

Liberals accuse conservatives of using crime and terrorism in the same way. Conservatives likewise accuse liberals of using the threat of a theocracy. The threat doesn't have to be real. It just has to be there.

What makes you think that since Islam cannot "reformed" to your liking by this time next year, that it cannot ever be "reformed?"

Because the Quran is the literal word of Allah? how does one reform Allah's direct teachings?

I'm open to suggestions, but to me that seems like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Gays, Jews, and apostates are to be put to death. How does one "reform" that?

Because the Quran is the literal word of Allah? how does one reform Allah's direct teachings? ~ I R A Darth Aggie at July 2, 2016 8:40 AM

Teachings.

So, it is literally the word of the prophet, given to him by the angel Gabriel, acting on orders from Allah.

The word was not spoken by Allah, but by two messengers.

Do Muslims take the Qu'ran literally?

Two things should be distinguished:

• The belief that the Qur'an is literally the word of God, in other words it was revealed, dictated to the Prophet (pbuh); he was not divinely inspired to compose it himself

• The belief that all of the Qur'an is written in a style that is factual and concrete and the words must be understood according to their literal meanings; not as poetic, figurative, metaphorical and symbolic language

"That Islam is currently undergoing a phase in which its followers reject science and modernity is not proof that Islam is incompatible with the modern world, but that its current adherents are."

Got a thousand years to wait? Got something to say to those murdered while we wait?

Got a thousand years to wait? Got something to say to those murdered while we wait? ~ Radwaste at July 2, 2016 9:53 AM

I didn't say stand idly by. Waiting won't do much good without pressure on these Third World primitives to adapt.

Punish those who commit crimes. Hold Islam accountable for its adherents' crimes against humanity. But don't trumpet that the solution is the complete eradication of Islam. The solution is the complete eradication of primitivity. And that will take time.

Conan: Once the threats are diminished, society can gaze inward and fix the structural problems in its own makeup. Until then, it cannot risk disintegrating over internal conflicts in the face of the barbarians.

In the modern world, how can the threats ever be diminished for Islamists and conservative Muslims? The threats are ideas about human rights and separation of church and state that Western civilization has. Ideas -- especially with the aid of modern technology -- cross borders. They don't stop at borders.

This is just so willfully oblivious. You're far more invested in your childish inclinations to fear and attention from sheeple-screaming than in any rational, proportionate, comparative or studious investigation of what Islam means to people... And will mean to people.

For the vast, almost incalculably large majority of practitioners, Islam already HAS reformed.


...As have other faiths, such as, say, Judaism.





Here's a fun math problem! There are 15 million
Jews in the world; There there are 1.5 billion Muslims. That's a difference of two orders of magnitude. Do you suppose there's an argument be had about which faith has brought more suffering into the world by proportion?

...Thinking out loud, because we (apparently) need to consider the possibility of reforming those who believe things we don't like.

...to be had...

Toobee. Tubey.

"What makes you think that since Islam cannot "reformed" to your liking by this time next year, that it cannot ever be "reformed?"

Because early religions didn't have access to automatic weapons and a worldwide network of insane sympathizers. Once the pagans were crushed, they were crushed. Period.

Good article from back in 2013 by Paul Berman about Sayyid Qutb:
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror

To anyone who has looked closely enough, Al Qaeda and its sister organizations plainly enjoy yet another strength, arguably the greatest strength of all, something truly imposing -- though in the Western press this final strength has received very little attention. Bin Laden is a Saudi plutocrat with Yemeni ancestors, and most of the suicide warriors of Sept. 11 were likewise Saudis, and the provenance of those people has focused everyone's attention on the Arabian peninsula. But Al Qaeda has broader roots. The organization was created in the late 1980's by an affiliation of three armed factions -- bin Laden's circle of ''Afghan'' Arabs, together with two factions from Egypt, the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the latter led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's top theoretician. The Egyptian factions emerged from an older current, a school of thought from within Egypt's fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the 1950's and 60's. And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb -- the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide.

In the modern world, how can the threats ever be diminished for Islamists and conservative Muslims? The threats are ideas about human rights and separation of church and state that Western civilization has. Ideas -- especially with the aid of modern technology -- cross borders. They don't stop at borders. ~ JD at July 2, 2016 10:46 AM

Islam is having debates about those ideas. We in the West are not hearing about them because we don't speak Arabic and we are irrelevant to Islam's inner turmoil. To them, we are the barbarian at the gate.

When the Ottomans ran the caliphate, the primitiveness we associate with modern Islam was far removed from the centers of civilization. While quite complex, the Ottoman legal system provided for a flexible and secular court system that was adaptable to local needs and customs. Kanun coexisted with Sharia.

Unfortunately, the Turks overstepped their bounds and alienated the Arabs. It was the defeat of the Turks and the successful revolt of the vassal Arabs that brought Wahhabism and evangelical fundamentalist Islam to the Middle Eastern forefront.

Add to this mix the inability of Arabs to gradually shake out their own systems of government and states due to lingering resentment toward former Turkish institutions of government and the interference of the Sykes-Picot arranged Western control of the Levant and you've got a mess.

Not every Muslim subscribes to the Wahhabi philosophy but most are in some way governed (or coerced) by it. Add in philosophical differences in Sunni and Shi'a Islam along with various sects within both and you've got a philosophical polyglot, not a monolith, as many commenters here and elsewhere seem to think.

Iranian maneuvering to be a major player in the Middle East (nostalgia for Persia's former influence in the region) is causing considerable unrest in the area.

Afghan and Pashtun cultural influences in their remote and harsh landscapes tend to be primitive and contribute to our belief that Islam is in and of itself primitive.

Muslims in North Africa and Southeast Asia follow primarily Sufi teachings, which tend to be more peaceful and these cultures tend to view religion as a lifestyle (perhaps a holdover from their ancestor religion, Buddhism?). North African Muslims tend toward a higher level. of superstition (demons, djinns, etc.). Until recently, Islam-inspired violence in Southeast Asia was rare.

Saudi Wahhabi missionaries have turned Central Africa into a hotbed of recruiting for Islam-inspired violence, i.e., Somalis etc. The latest converts to a religion always seem to be the most zealous.

Most of the violence being done in the name of Islam is being done by Arab, Persian, and Central Asian Muslim adherents. This is culture, not religion.

How fed up is the world?

Buddhists are burning down mosques. That's how fed up.

Feeding Muslims at a soup kitchen?

Mind the ax and knife, mon frere.

So what happened when Canada put Muslim men into local high schools to "assimilate" them?

Two guesses as long as they involve sexual harassment and hating Jews.

Media tries to downplay the events, of course ...

Not buying it. If you want out of Islam, or any other faith, you leave it.

Yes, in Middle Eastern countries, apostasy is punished with death, which is why you leave the Middle East first.

But this "once a Muslim, always a Muslim" attitude would deny those who sincerely wish to leave the faith their opportunity for redemption.

And it's reminiscent of that article you posted years ago by the porcine and hideously ugly Debbie Schlussel, who insisted that Barack Obama just had to be a Muslim, because his father was a Muslim (actually, his father was an atheist) and if you're father is a Muslim, you're a Muslim, too. And once you're a Muslim, you're always a Muslim.

For my own part, I will allow individuals to identify themselves as they see fit, and not dictate for them what they are.

"Not buying it. If you want out of Islam, or any other faith, you leave it.

Yes, in Middle Eastern countries, apostasy is punished with death, which is why you leave the Middle East first."

Oh to be 16 again, and so clueless about history and culture that you think if something isn't working out for someone, or they live in a dangerous unstable kleptocracy, they can just pack a liilte bag, and buy a ticket to another life.

Seriously folks, there needs to be a government program for people like Patrick J.; called *reality check* It would start by drop kicking them out of a low flying C-130 into rural Kazakhstan sans American Passport, with nothing but the clothes on their back.

No one said it was easy, Isab. But it can be done. Because it has been done.

I think it's a good time to post a link to the article, "Are Christianity and Judaism as Violent as Islam?"
Amy posted this before and it's an excellent piece:
http://www.meforum.org/2159/are-judaism-and-christianity-as-violent-as-islam

There is no horror from primitive cultures in Islam that's not been practiced by Christians, across a much grander swath of history, with every bit as much brutality.

To argue that you prefer today's modernized, fragmented, milquetoast expressions of faith in Christ to the unpleasant versions of Islam in detached and impoverished corners of the world says nothing about your sensitivity to injustice or your awareness of world affairs.

What it says is that you prefer messes which have already been mopped up, and by other people, to those still on the floor.

Are you to be admired for your courage?

Do you need to be admired that badly?

Did you think admiration would come to you that inexpensively?

"It has to be done."

C'mon guys. Leaving a crime ridden city is much harder than getting in the car or on a bus. Leaving your part of the world?

W/no common language, currency, method of passage, do you bring the wife and kids, leave them, ... Look at the Europe. It's being tried now w/limited success.

Those that succeed will need the support of the very people they are running from so don't expect a quick change. (See the no language, no skills, etc.)

It's a different world now. A strong back and a willingness to work just doesn't cut it anymore.

Refugees, drop-outs, high school grads w/no skills whatsoever are not going to change anything. Especially if they buy the $15/hr minimum "we will take care of you" gambit. They will be doing good if they just survive.

Change might happen here in the US but I don't expect it to happen in PC Europe (you'll break the law just discussing it) or in the ME.

As Crid points out there's enough of 'em that a significant change can happen if they want it. But here in the safety of USA why would they rock the boat? Who is going to be their Martin Luther?

@ Crid "For the vast, almost incalculably large majority of practitioners, Islam already HAS reformed."
To quote yourself, did you even read the post?

It didn't mention Al Qaeda or the Daesh. It deals with the difficulty of disengaging the dictates of the Quran, as interpreted, from the legal system. You provided a dramatic, but irrelevant diagram. You could have been more on point even with Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam#Apostasy_in_the_recent_past

If you do the math you learn that nearly 600 million Muslims live under criminal penalties for apostasy. That's a lot of people you're just writing off.

> It deals with the difficulty of
> disengaging the dictates of the
> Quran, as interpreted, from
> the legal system.

Turtledove, "as interpreted" is either gratuitous or misguided, and "the legal system" is pretentiously unspecific. The graphic is a spotless demonstration of Amy's failures of proportion and scholarship: "Doing the math" has been the annoying evasion of scamming salesman for nearly 20 years. I'm not the one writing people off on religious grounds ("can't be reformed").

(Except bogus internet commentators.)

Re: As interpreted/legal system

Swing and a miss, pretty boy. Again, from the Wikipedia entry:

Afghanistan: Article 130 of the Afghan Constitution requires its courts to apply provisions of Hanafi Sunni fiqh for crimes of apostasy in Islam.

Brunei: Brunei is the latest Muslim country to enact a law that makes apostasy a crime punishable with death. In 2013, it enacted Syariah (Sharia) Penal Code. Section 112(1) . . .

Egypt: The blasphemy laws and Article 98(f) of Egyptian Penal Code, as amended by Law 147, has been used to prosecute Muslims who have converted to Christianity.

Malaysia: State laws in Kelantan and Terengganu make apostasy in Islam a crime punishable with death, while state laws of Perak, Malacca, Sabah, and Pahang declare apostasy by Muslims as a crime punishable with jail terms.

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia has no penal code, and defaults its law entirely to Sharia and its implementation to religious courts. The case law in Saudi Arabia, and consensus of its jurists is that Islamic law imposes the death penalty on apostates, . . .

Et. al.

Someday, I should get around to reading the Qu'ran. I read recently on a website that the Bible is actually more violent than the Qu'ran itself. And according to this site, the Qu'ran actually has no prescribed penalty for homosexuality. It speaks against it, yes, but it doesn't actually say what to do with those who commit homosexual acts.

No idea if that's true.

"There is no horror from primitive cultures in Islam that's not been practiced by Christians, across a much grander swath of history, with every bit as much brutality."

Why would a supposedly educated man jump on this "two wrongs" fallacy?

It was wrong then, it's wrong now, and if Christians were doing this today we'd be after them to stop it.

Your deployment of boldface text gives your comment a gentle but indisputable piquancy; a musky, masculine ambience which can't be denied. Little muffins are so eager to read any broader perspective as simple killjoy... Yet Amy isn't describing this as merely "wrong": She's affirmed that Islam will "wash over us," as it "can't be reformed." As if this challenge was unprecedented, or had not been anticipated by people who don't need childish postures of terrorized ignorance in order to maintain their interest in the topic.

It's great, Raddles, that you're starting zoom out from the fear-y part a little bit. 'Wrong then, wrong now.' Wonderful!

> Et. al.

You mean et cetera and not et alii, my busty little schoolmarm... This is what happens when Wikipedia people try to do Latin. As interpreted, your comment is spurious within the comment system anyway— Yeah, Afghanistan: No affiliation to modernity but for languished/extinguished Western outreach (and more lately, promising lithium exports). Egypt: Famous for her cultural antiquity and religious fervor in social & economic isolation. Energy and nothing else accounts for 90% and 95% of export earnings for Saudi Arabia and Brunei, respectively: Is that the connectedness by which you'd hoped to bring these cultures into the contemporary family of nations? On this most darling of American holidays, cower under the proud rippling of the windwhipped Malaysian colors and piss yourself with fear, you heathen cur.

Patrick should read whatever books he wants: But reading the Quran will no more describe the plodding paths of these cultures than will the New Testament chart the history of Vatican Hill.

Boom! Boom! Two Sunday morning firecrackers!

Et cetera it is. Perhaps you belong to the genus irritable vatum. No insult intended.
There’s hardly anything more central to our world economy than energy production. And the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Maybe as a lever for modernity, it might work. Ditto with lithium.
I offered Wiki because it would be an easy step up from your diagram. Maybe you would accept Pew research:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/28/which-countries-still-outlaw-apostasy-and-blasphemy/

The point of the post is not to cower in fear, but to recognize that our brothers and sisters under Islam are being coerced by the religion. Here’s a seasonal and appropriate quote from T. Jefferson that we all learned in grade school:
. . . “for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

The point of the post is not to cower in fear, but to recognize that our brothers and sisters under Islam are being coerced by the religion. Here’s a seasonal and appropriate quote from T. Jefferson that we all learned in grade school:
. . . “for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Canvasback at July 3, 2016 9:16 AM

No they aren't. They are being indoctrinated into their culture. A culture that can't be *separated from* Islam, because it is the culture that *created* Islam.

If your insults aren't sincere, I don't even want to hear them.

There's this continually bubbling impression in these exchanges that people accept my responses to Amy's posts as meaning These savage behaviors aren't really that bad.

And on history's grand canvas, they kinda aren't... But that's not the largest view. What I'm saying is that using Islam as explication for all this wretchedness is ahistorical and naive. It's naive about the nature of all hearts, and belittles the profound, nearly astringent refinement by which Western culture defeats these nearly universal human evils.

Amy's got it backwards: Islam, especially as practiced in our most primitive and detached corners, is entirely mundane. It's an opportunistic infection, indistinguishable from the broad and ham-fisted control wielded by Village Big Men throughout history. I've seen their handiwork with my own eyes in Fiji and Papua New Guinea: Disabling the control women have over their sexuality, reproduction and work; authority over a region's transportation and dispensation of natural resources; whimsical assignment of economic fulfillment, education, and even literacy. Yeah, sure... Islam is a handsome (if inessential) pocketknife in such cultures, especially when the population you're going to command doesn't know how to read anyway...

...Or when it won't be connected to more illuminated & enriching cultures except by a single enterprise already under your thumb. The importance of energy to customers isn't what blows the lid off; that happens with a diversity of commercial trades and communications, and all their attendant venues for interaction... Landlines + fax + cellular + optic pipe + Spotify + exchange students + post-graduate colloquia + business trips + industry conferences in distant cities with business women (!) and maybe newspapers in a hotel lobby. That's what takes the Big Man out of the Big Chair.

Condemnable mastery of an underclass by a guy who happens to have some muscle, with the resultant wealth disparities passed down through generations is how it's done on this planet. It's not a Koranic innovation. For the love of Christ, look at what's happening on both sides of the North Atlantic this summer, let alone the rest of the planet!

Why, exactly, is Amy pretending this is something new, something only she has read about, when her own perspective so so deliberately shallow and blinkered?

Paul Berman, in "The Philosopher of Islamic Terror":

It would be nice to think that, in the war against terror, our side, too, speaks of deep philosophical ideas -- it would be nice to think that someone is arguing with the terrorists and with the readers of Sayyid Qutb. But here I have my worries. The followers of Qutb speak, in their wild fashion, of enormous human problems, and they urge one another to death and to murder. But the enemies of these people speak of what? The political leaders speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion. This is no answer to the terrorists. The terrorists speak insanely of deep things. The antiterrorists had better speak sanely of equally deep things. Presidents will not do this. Presidents will dispatch armies, or decline to dispatch armies, for better and for worse.

But who will speak of the sacred and the secular, of the physical world and the spiritual world? Who will defend liberal ideas against the enemies of liberal ideas? Who will defend liberal principles in spite of liberal society's every failure? President George W. Bush, in his speech to Congress a few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, announced that he was going to wage a war of ideas. He has done no such thing. He is not the man for that.

Philosophers and religious leaders will have to do this on their own. Are they doing so? Armies are in motion, but are the philosophers and religious leaders, the liberal thinkers, likewise in motion? There is something to worry about here, an aspect of the war that liberal society seems to have trouble understanding -- one more worry, on top of all the others, and possibly the greatest worry of all.

Patrick: I read recently on a website that the Bible is actually more violent than the Qu'ran itself.

Since the Old Testament is part of the Bible, I wouldn't doubt that. The God in the Old Testament was violent. According to the story of Noah, that Old Testament God wiped out not just all human beings, but all living creatures (except for those on the ark)...

Genesis:

Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

It's hard to get more violent than that.

But if you leave out the Old Testament, and look at the two main holy figures of both religions, Muhammed was more violent than Jesus (Jesus was not violent at all.)

Wanna know the biggest contributor to the death of Christianity's power?

The plague. When over half the population dies, the majority being your subsistence level workers you have to invest in education to make the remaining workers better able to produce twice as much as they used to.

Problem with educated workers is many of them want to know more, and do more, and be free to do what they want becuase they now more readily grasp the fact that there is more to the world.

Those of you saying 'it has been done, it can be done'

You are right, all we have to do is kill roughly 70% of the middle east's population. Now have no moral qualms about such a course of action, but I doubt any of you are willing to do the heavy lifting yourself

> The God in the Old Testament
> was violent.

See also that Cosh link above (yonder).

See also the follow-up.



Basicballs, you people aren't going to be cool with this until the imprecations and stipulations of those praising a smiting Almighty are completely vacated in social —rather than one's personal— affairs.

Umm... I'm cool with that.

"Yet Amy isn't describing this as merely "wrong": She's affirmed that Islam will "wash over us," as it "can't be reformed." As if this challenge was unprecedented, or had not been anticipated by people who don't need childish postures of terrorized ignorance in order to maintain their interest in the topic."

This has the aroma of that famous fallacy, "appeal to prior practice", notable in that those who try to defend against the last threat fail to anticipate the new. To be most effective, you must assume every battle features something that wasn't there before, and you aren't comforting or preparing anyone by citing past offenses. Further... this hasn't been anticipated, except in war games and sci-fi: one contender is not a nation-state. Who do you aim at to cripple their systems?
The "churn" is manipulated by opportunists á lá Emanuel Goldstein; it is contrary to some interests to end any battle decisively or to hold onto a victory. This churn is what makes this look worse.

Huh?

"What I'm saying is that using Islam as explication for all this wretchedness is ahistorical and naive. It's naive about the nature of all hearts, and belittles the profound, nearly astringent refinement by which Western culture defeats these nearly universal human evils."

Yep.

Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

Funny thing, almost every ancient religion or mythology on earth has a deluge myth. Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Hindu, Greek, and even North American mythology all tell tales of massive floods brought about by some supernatural force or being to effect a rebirth of mankind. And all these myths feature a hero who represents the good in mankind and mankind's yearning for life.

The Old Testament has at least two major purge stories with the attendant heroes, Noah and Lot.

Radwaste, to borrow from Emily Dickinson, that was a "bold little beauty."

Conan, Funny thing, almost every ancient religion or mythology on earth has a deluge myth.

What about Islam? Does it have a deluge myth? Is the Allah of the Qur'an as violent as the God of the Old Testament?

What about Islam? Does it have a deluge myth? Is the Allah of the Qur'an as violent as the God of the Old Testament? ~ JD at July 4, 2016 12:24 PM

Actually, JD, Islam does have a flood myth. It has the same flood myth that the Old Testament has. Nûḥ ibn Lamech ibn Methuselah (aka Noah) was one of the earliest prophets of Allah.

Islam borrows heavily from the Jewish tradition expressed in the Old Testament and even borrows from the New Testament. Islam shares many prophets with Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus is accorded status as a prophet in Islam.

The Allah of the Qur'an is the God of the Old Testament.

It has the same flood myth that the Old Testament has. . . . The Allah of the Qur'an is the God of the Old Testament.

Thanks Conan. In that case, the way I see it, the Qur'an is more violent than the Bible because it has the same violent God/Allah, who (according to the story) wiped out almost all living creatures, while also having a more violent holy figure, Muhammed.

> Funny thing, almost every
> ancient religion or mythology
> on earth has a deluge myth

Every culture literate enough to have recorded descriptions of the local environs will have noticed that there are shell fossils most everywhere, even the mountaintops.

Until the acceptance —within in my own blessed lifetime— of plate tectonics, it would have been unthinkable that most if not all the world's surface had been at the bottom of the ocean at least once, and maybe repeatedly... Including the highest peaks.

So the wisest men in the world all concluded that there must have been a flood.

You wouldn't believe what they said about the women.

So the wisest men in the world all concluded that there must have been a flood. ~ Crid at July 4, 2016 10:59 PM

Probably as good a theory as any. And better than most.

Some anthropologists have theorized that the common deluge mythology stems from the glacial lakes and flood from retreating glaciers during the end of the last ice age. I have my doubts as all these flood myths share common themes not relevant to retreating glaciers. All of these flood myths seem to have linked the flood to human rebirth and the redemption of mankind.

I'm just amazed at how many of our various religious systems throughout the world and history have the same themes repeating. Campbell explored this in his Masks of God series. Some themes are universal: the hero's journey, virgin birth, conquering death, and deluge being four that repeat in almost every mythology, even among peoples who could not have had any contact with each other.

Basic human fears and desires? Or a link to something in our prehistoric past imprinted in all human DNA?