Like I said, I don't read overbearingly Christian blogs. I heard all I want to hear from them after the first time they said I was going to burn in hell for not believing what they believe in. The extent to which I'm still willing to listen to their message is in the form of the Flanders on 'The Simpsons'.

I have a thicker skin with blogs of other religions because I haven't had their dogma forced down my throat all my life, either through media or accosted in person, and can approach them on my own terms, looking for good ideas. Unfortunately, you get the same thing in any hegemonic religion, including Buddhism, Islam, and dogmatic atheism, that reduces humanity to concepts, and weighs "righteous" abstracts more heavily than the human beings who are their subjects.

My naivete had me engage in what turned out to be a fundamentalist Muslim's blog. The picture of the author, who allegedly lives in England, wearing a burqa didn't ring a bell, if you need to know how incredibly dense I can be. I didn't even clue in when I read her piece on how she has proof of Allah and that Islam is the only way to Him. My reaction: Well, she seems to have an interesting point of view, perhaps I could sit down for spot of tea with her. Yea, her, me, and Jimmy Swaggart.

I decided to leave a comment after reading her spiel lambasting the (liberal) idea that everyone's opinion has equal validity, and that post-modern thought is completely wrong in positing that humans and truth are social constructs. It would mean that everybody is right and nobody is wrong, and that can't be so. Of course, in this moral dynamic, she and her narrow, intolerant view bearing the flag for Islam and God are the "right".

I naively left a comment, ironically worded in a way meant to respect her opinion, pointing out that certain moral values she mentioned in her post were the same ones that George W. Bush would attribute to himself, suggesting these things are subjective.

Stepping into the vernacular, I mentioned that only God holds the truth, and it is only before God that the truth of Judgment will be known. Until then we should be mindful of our own intolerance and hate because those are ugly things to bring before God.

Her response was that my comment proved her original post exactly. See? That's what I'm talking about!

It didn't take too much longer for me to realize I had encountered firsthand the Islamic counterpart of the Christian conservative right, and that this was not a person with whom anything could be discussed. She called opinions the "bastard daughter of conceit" (and you'd think that would have clued me in to stop reading and get off that page, but NOOOO!).

So this was a woman posting an opinion piece, and I do remember she used "IMHO" in the first sentence, so she was at least nominally aware that it was only an opinion, criticizing the equal validity of subjective opinions. And maybe I proved her point by preaching tolerance instead of outright telling her that her opinion was full of shit and that she was a hypocritical idiot, like I should have. I don't know. The logic of fundamentalists confuses the hell out of me.