Unwholesome Extremists - Gotta Love 'em!

(Added March 20, 2013.)

I found out something strange today, just before I was about to call a friend of mine - we'll call him... 'Jonathan' for no particular reason - Phil received a phone call from a mutual friend who told us that I won't be allowed to call him anymore.
` At least, not until he moves out of his mom's house, which won't be in too long. Why? Because his mom just found out he's Agnostic - this is the first time I've ever heard about it explicitly myself, as I have never asked him his position on That Kind of Thing before, nor had we ever really talked about It. (Partly because of the danger of her picking up the phone.)
` But she's so certain that I had Something To Do With It (even though she doesn't even know me) that he's not allowed to answer the phone anymore.
` That's too bad, because he always looked forward so much to my calls.... he'd just wait by the phone. I don't blame him. I suppose he could call me, but only when his mom isn't home.
Why?

Well, it's not like she's mean - she's just Afraid.

Fear of Others Not Like You is a very sad thing when one is Unwholesomely Extreme. It's called Intolerance.
` Intolerance tends to spring from Ignorance.

For example; she once asked Phil, who at the time was in college; "Why does anyone study 'other' planets like Mars? They're just science fiction!" Okay... so that pink dot in the sky is a tiny little thing meant for Decorating the Sky?
` I could potentially see through this (thing that looks like a big hot water tank in a friend's hallway but is really a) huge telescope that Mars not only is spherical, but Saturn has rings and Jupiter has stripes, etc.
` If she had looked through this telescope, though, it would not have amounted to anything, really, as I would still have to be able to show her that the Earth is Round and Orbits a Gigantic Nuclear Reacter called The Sun. Not an easy task.

This is what I mean by Unwholesomely Extreme.

How did she get that way, you ask? Well, the above mutual friend has kindly explained to me the reason for this: When she was about two, her father, who was insane, took the wife and gaggle of kids out back to shoot them all. Luckily, a neighbor saw what was going on and stopped him.
` Needless to say, after that, her mother was all alone and had to adopt several of the kids out to Poor Amish People Who Abused Children. She was among those kids.
` Long Story Short, when she came back to Technology Land, she began going to high school. Since she could scarcely read or write - at the time, anyway - she was quickly laughed out and presumably never tried to Learn Anything again.
` Instead, her education seems to come from What the Bible Literally Says. This probably means that she would consider Phil (who, by the way, became a council member at his church just last Sunday) to be some type of Heathen. Jus' like 'Jonathan'!

What? We're all going to Hell, and she's not invited?

Seriously, though, that's just... Unwholesome. And... well, Extreme. Caging the poor boy.
` Not taking him to the doctor when he was too sick to walk that one time, insisting on praying for him... (Thank goodness it was just some kind of non-lethal food poisoning!) That type of thing.
` No wonder he got frustrated with religion, whenever that happened, but I'm fairly sure that's not the only reason... As for me, I have a completely different story. Maybe later.

Anyway, I feel the urge to go make a smoothie. Whee!

P.S. Sorry if I pissed anyone off, but any type of Unwholesome Extremism is Not My Thing, religious or not.

(At the end of this post I got a lot of spam, as usual... I hope I can keep it away on this blog!)