Vicious mental software. Its maddening to think that all this guy would have needed to not end up doing what he does, and being what he is, is the establishment of a few memes, concerning the history of religion, the illogic of a creator-god (scientific understanding), and basic moral philosophy. Carl Sagan’s series, Cosmos, would have been perfect.

Instead he got stuck on a path where the foundational principles for his Islamic worldview went almost completely unchallenged. His only philosophical struggle being that concerning how exactly to intensify his submission to Allah.

I stark reminder, that we should always be looking for ways to diversify our strategies in polluting the rivers of bullshit, from which too many of our fellow creatures drink.

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Hammami was consumed with a profound internal conflict. He didn’t know whether to be Muslim or Christian. On rare trips to Damascus when they were little, Omar and Dena were warned by relatives that they would go to hell if they weren’t Muslim, Dena recalled. In Perdido, their mother’s family insisted that hell was reserved for non-Christians.

When he was 12, Hammami wrote in his journal, “Sometimes I get confused because the Bible says one thing and our textbooks and Darwin say another.” He had a hard time understanding how God could have a son. That same year, his father began urging him to study Islam.

This is a precarious way for a child to learn about the world.

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to Jason01: “vicious mental software”.  Very well-put.

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Sad case for sure, but I admit I am going to use his Jesus being a narcissist bit about praying to himself the next time I debate a Christian.

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The poor boy was so full of conflict and so under-stimulated in his growing-up environment, I don’t wonder at all how this could have happened. So many people trying to tell him what to believe and what he could go to hell for, and being the bright boy he was he must have been able to spot the logical fallacies immediately but in the end deemed emotional relationships and loyalty to crazy people more important than rational thought, because he needed so badly to belong to something which wasn’t full of contradictions.

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