I read PZ on a daily basis. I’m usually guaranteed a laugh, some righteous outrage, or an interesting scientific debate.

Today I got a beautiful essay on murder in the name of religion.

All around the world, people are killing and being killed; they are crossing the clearest, least arbitrary border we have. You don’t come back from death, and you can’t atone for extinguishing another life. There are no excuses. Life is not a video game, where your targets are smears of pixels with no history and no awareness. In the real world, those bodies are people, with 20 years or 30 years or 50 years or 70 years of stories and connections behind them, part of a web of humanity, and their every action tugs on the people around them. Dehumanizing them, as we often do, dehumanizes us. You are the killer, but you are also the killed.

I teared up reading it. It’s a powerful essay, with the 2nd person section a powerful comment on killing and death. Read the whole thing.