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I must start off by saying I am no defender of Islam. I think it is a totalitarian political-military-cultural system stuck together by borrowed spiritual glue and the blood of its victims. I consider Muhammad to be a bloody-handed lecher, slave-trader, and religious charlatan (partly a conscious manipulative fraud, but also sporadically demon-possessed, too, if you ask me.)

Having said that, I am highly skeptical of the moon-god theory. The Islamic system has many, many errors of its own, but its errors are quite fastidiously distinct from moon-god-worship. Such worship is rejected by both the theory and practice of actual Muslims, who, after all, ought to count for something.

It seems to me, by my reading of the evidence, that the moon-god-hypothesis is a tendentious misinterpretation of Islam. I find actual Muslims quite fiercely monotheistic, literalistic and iconoclastic, even moreso than our dear Puritans.

Robert Morey, a prestigious scholar on a par with Dan Brown, is the apparent source, or at least promoter-vendor, of most of this "Muslim moon god" hypothesis. Having had the pleasure of riffling through one of Morey's other books, "Is Eastern Orthodoxy Christian?", I have developed a profound respect for his talent for writing fast sloppy pastiches on things about which he knows very little, to harvest fistfuls of dollars off of credulous readers who know even less than he does.

(I say "pleasure" because I still, alas, enjoy the barbaric thrill of howling, eye-rolling and book-pitching when I read something so pretentiously silly. It's like The DaVinci Code. Silly on stilts. Really, really tall stilts.)

So. There you have my view of it.

I am in love with the Bible readings for today through Sunday. I want to go back and dig out the cross-references. It's fascinating: every word is like hypertext, a hot link leading to more insight about our Savior Jesus Christ and His goodness. How good He is!

Peace be with you. May God bless you; and if I may ask, please include me in your prayers.