I'm not very convinced the authors of the Quran were onto anything particularly grand by today's standards. I know I'm repeating myself on this point a bit, but it's impossible for me to believe that the most perfect book in the universe, one directly inspired by God himself, would have lent itself to such drastic misinterpretations. I don't believe the Quran, or any holy text, is the world of God. I've never seen any convincing scientific proof that it is. I've seen plenty of convincing scientific proof of evolution. People who've devoted their lives to their professions and each know infinitely more on their subjects than I do are nearly unanimous on this. The overwhelming majority of scientists who believe in evolution isn't arbitrary. They didn't arrive there through faith.

I'm not totally at odds with the notion there may have been some deity of some sort responsible for the Big Bang and everything that followed, but how life came to be was no graceful thing in my eyes. There were billions of years were the universe wasn't even habitable. Almost none of it is still today. It's vast beyond measure and life is incredibly uncommon. There's anti-matter and collapsing supernovas and blackholes and one day our sun will stop burning. There were billions of years of pain-staking evolution in our movement between single-celled organisms and who we are today. I don't think of it as anything particularly quick or perfect in nature. The vast majority of the species to ever exist are now extinct.

I really hope it doesn't at all seem as though I'm leveling any personal accusations against you in what I said about Islam and the way that so many practice it. One of the great dangers of religion is just how widely open to interpretation that they are. I've met Christians who see in their bible reasons to be christ-like and I've met Christians who think it's every reason to support philandering hypocrites like Donald Trump.

I don't expect you to apologize for the worst members of your religion. I only you can acknowledge that they're real, are acting on the same book that you are and that these suicide bombers exist in far greater proportions than they do for other spiritual practices. The Catholic Church deserves to answer for how pervasive their pedophilia problem has been, and for the lengths they've gone to cover it up. Scientology and mormonism have their unique problems to. There's an enormous amount of barbarism that's happened in the name of your religion. I don't need to be an expert in the Quran for that to be true.

The majority of the world's suicide bombings are done in the name of Islam. So many of the countries with the most oppressive regimes are acting on the Quran. These are statistical facts. And at the same time, there are Muslims who I'm friends with and there are Muslims who are thoughtful enough to hash out religion with strangers on the internet. I'm certainly not that American who thinks all Muslims are terrorists. I've been to the Middle East and I understand how complicated these issues are.

I'll check out your piece!