GoddessJ and I have been watching, with a mixture of horror and incredulity, a web dustup between an outspoken atheist and a large religious group recently. Read the link if you want the gory details, but the upshot of it is that the more zealous people on the religious side are threatening to do physical harm against those who don’t agree with them.

It’s no wonder that violent and intolerant religions took over the world for several centuries. Irrational people have a definite advantage in a physical confrontation. Fortunately, the Internet puts potential combatants out of immediate physical reach of one another, and tempers irrationality by forcing people to think a little before doing something physically violent — they have to make plans to get to the object of their ire, and that gives them time for emotions to cool, and for them to consider what following through on it would cost them.

If for nothing else, that makes the Internet a wonderful thing.