OVO

Eric Robert Rudolph killed two people and injured nearly two hundred others through public bombings. Rudolph evaded the law for five years, during which time he was provided for by much of the town of Murphy, North Carolina. Rudolph has been captured, confessed to his crimes in court, and been sentenced to four consecutive life terms. There are many news articles about Rudolph right now – but how many of them say that Rudolph killed people because he was a Christian? Very few. They use other names for him.

If they call him a ‘white supremist‘ then they don’t have to call him a Christian. If they call him an ‘extremist‘ they they don’t have to call him a Christian. If they call him a ‘terrorist‘ then they don’t have to call him a Christian. But at the end of the day, Eric Robert Rudolph killed people not because he was a white supremist, an extremist or a terrorist (he was none of these) but because he was a Christian. He attempted to kill (and sometimes did kill) abortion providers and homosexuals because that is what the Bible orders Christians to do (Leviticus 20:13, Exodus 21:22-23) and what Jesus Christ confirmed should be done (Matthew 5:18, Luke 16:17).

Whether it be Eric Rudolph or Osama bin Ladin who as part of their religion kills people then goes into hiding with the cooperation of locals, it is time to consider the value of exempting religion from a final toss onto the same bonfire that slavery, illiteracy, polio and other horrors have already been tossed. Religion will be right at home in those flames, as it expressly favors slavery, illiteracy and polio.

What does religion really cost us? Think of it this way – what would the world be like if our mathematics were suddenly eight hundred to one thousand years more advanced? That’s what the world would be like now if two books by Archimedes, The Method and The Stomachion, had not been lost. The ink of these books had been scraped off the velum by Christians so they could write prayer books on the pages.