Sometimes I like to pretend that I have a spaceship that I call Old Speed, in honor of Jack Nicholson’s horse in Going South. To me, Old Speed stole the picture right out from under Nicholson who starred and directed the film. As I recall, the movie opened with Jack on Old Speed, hell-bent for the Rio Grande, with a posse on his tail. Old Speed outran the posse and splashed across a shallow crossing of the river. When they got to the other side, Jack jumped down and starting jumping around and mocking the posse. He was in Mexico and they couldn’t touch him. But the posse urged their horses into the river anyway. Jack, in a panic, turned for Old Speed but Old Speed fainted and fell to the ground. My Old Speed has fainted just like that, right when I needed her the most.

Old Speed is my computer. It’s a laptop. With all her fainting spells, she still takes me to almost any place I want to go. Not only does she take me anywhere I want within the moment, she can go back in time and paint a map to the future that I’m able to follow according to logical, well-placed signs that only the eyes of the peculiarly intelligent and often wise are able to pick up.

For instance, Old Speed and I were zooming around the Internet a few weeks ago, looking for cracks in the walls of reason in serious need of being addressed when we came across an opinion in The Chattanoogan by James Bolt, claiming that Christianity was in danger of being destroyed by the radical Muslims and that all Christians and even nonbelievers should rally around the flag of Christianity in its hour of need, if Christianity is to be saved and indeed, Democracy itself and the hopes for freedom throughout the world.

In the future, Bolt says, we will have three choices concerning how we will be governed: (1) Democracy based on Judeo/Christian influence. (2) Absolute theocratic rule. (3) A Communist controlled, totalitarian, police state.

“We must put forth our greatest effort to defend Christianity, or we will find ourselves under the harsh circumstance of absolute Theocratic rule,” he says.

Bolt concludes his lengthy opinion piece by proclaiming that he is “not taking the high ground here, merely pointing out that our Judeo/Christian persuasion gives us the best chance to hold on to our freedom. The principles set forth in their doctrine are the basis of present day Western Democracy and should be defended with all of our might. Christian faith is as much American as ‘Old Glory and Apple Pie.’”

I know Bolt, through his opinions in The Chattanoogan and correspondence with me, to be an intelligent, well-meaning person. I found myself in agreement with his first paragraph, “Whether you are God-fearing, or a confirmed evolutionist, you can’t deny that religion plays a major role in today’s world.”

“Religion,” he adds, “plays a much bigger role in society than just the concept of heaven and hell.” Who wouldn’t agree with that? But then he says, “Even non believers should recognize the effect of a guilty conscience, on a man’s behavior.”

That was the sentence that illuminated his other sentences and made me realize that we weren’t looking at the role that religion plays in the world in the same way. It appears here that he is not talking about the bad things that religion has caused in the world, but claiming it has done all the good and is the only possible salvation and hope for the world. Apparently, without religion (Judeo/Christian) mankind would lose the benefit of a guilty conscience to help guide it in the way it should go. Even a nonbeliever should know that, he says.

As a Deist, which is pretty much the same as a non-believer, because, even though I believe in God, I don’t believe in any form of revealed religion or religious text claiming to be the word of God, I must say that I’ve seen no evidence in history or the present day world that would give me any reason to believe that the religious conscience of the masses, regardless of what religion it stems from, has resulted in anything worth bragging about.

I do see the two major religions in the world, along with all their offshoots, as being the most responsible for the terrible, nasty mess that the world is in today. It has been under their leadership and the actions of their members that have led us every step of the way to the present moment.

There are about 20 world religions. Christianity has about 2 billion followers, representing about 33 percent of the world’s population; Islam has about 1.2 billion, about 19.6 percent of the world’s population. Together they represent over half of the world’s population. Coming in third is Hinduism with about 828 million members and representing 12 percent of the world’s population. In fourth place are the nonreligious, accounting for about 12 percent of the total population with about 775 million who claim no religion.

Most of us do not even need computers to recall the Great Crusades of the Middle Ages when the Christians tried to wipe out the Muslims by killing them for Jesus. We either read about it or learned about it in school. The moral we learned from it, of course, was that it is wrong to make war and kill in the name of religion.

It appears that the major religions are getting along pretty well together. Obviously there are some radical Muslims among the followers of Islam, but probably no more in number than the hardcore fundamentalists and members of radical offshoots within the Christian religion which has more than 34,000 separate groups or denominations. Certainly there are not enough radical Muslims to pose any threat to Christianity’s existence in the world, including America with a population that is about 75 percent Christian.

So why does Bolt see a need for calling out a warning that Christianity is under siege and that the people need to rally ‘round the flag of Christianity in order to save Christianity and the Democracy that he claims it gave birth to? (Actually there is nothing Democratic about Christianity and it certainly did not give birth to Democracy, but who knows how many believe like Bolt?)

What we have here is an ironic example of a Christian coming straight out and claiming that the situation we’re in today is nothing less than a religious war between Christianity and Islam, in a struggle to the death to see which one survives. One would like to think that the Crusades had put an end to that kind of thinking, but apparently not.

He uses the term “radical Muslims,” as if he were making some distinction, but it is pretty obvious by his words and arguments, such as “Judeo/Christian influence gives democracy its best (and in my opinion, its only) chance, to survive,” that he is making the claim that a religious war between Christianity and nonChristians (Muslims) is at our doorstep and it’s time for action.

The only shooting wars that we’re in right now are Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and his never-ending War on Terror which will serve as an excuse for either him or McCain (if he’s elected) to pull a preemptive attack on Iran for the illegal purpose of regime change.

During these types of wars it can get a little difficult for average Americans to distinguish “radical Muslims” from normal Muslims fighting against the occupying forces. Especially with an America occupying two whole nations full of Muslims, while planning a preemptive on Iran, running out of oil and paying through the nose at the gas pump.

Rather than seeing all this as part of a larger, life and death religious war between Christianity and Islam (even radical Islam), it would be better for the religious to see it for what it is, wars that are being waged for the sake of power and the fruits of greed, which we should not be engaged in.

The religious should be calling for an ending of them, rather than fanning the flames for more war by claiming that Christianity is in danger and we’re fighting for Jesus, Democracy, the American Way and peace among men through our Bush Wars and wherever they take us.

Now is the time for all those who would be peculiarly intelligent and often wise to start challenging this type of thinking. This is the great communication age and there’s a lot of communication that needs to take place before we can defeat this warmongering attitude and replace it with a peacemaking attitude that can lead us to peace in the world and an end to our illegal and immoral wars.

One would think that even the religious could see the good in that. And speaking of religion, it was free thinking, not religion, that gave birth to our Democratic Republic. And it will be thinking, not religion, that will allow us to penetrate the vast unknown outside of religion in search of answers that can help us solve the terrible problems that face humanity today and on into the 21st Century in a very religious and dangerous world.

Something’s got to give. A change has got to come and it’s got to come soon, or we won’t even have the Russians left to bury us when it all goes up in the smoke and hellfire of nuclear holocaust because of religion, power, greed and mass stupidity all coming together at once to form the perfect storm.

That’s the way it looks from up here as I go flying around on Old Speed, looking down on the world, charting its history and watching its actions, wondering, as the great poet, William Butler Yeats, said in his poem, The Second Coming, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Naman Crowe, a Vietnam veteran, began his award-winning journalism career in 1971. He has written for numerous publications. He can be reached at namancrowe@yahoo.com.