Something For Nothing

There is no such thing as blasphemy. Blasphemy specifically is decrying and disgracing God, Allah or whatever other false idols are revered by religious sects. Since there is no empirical proof that any of these entities ever existed, blasphemy is irrelevant.
Sacrilege is another obsolete term since nothing is sacred. What some hold to be sacred is as relevant or profound as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. These non-sequiturs bound to one superstition of another will eventually fade away under the glare of superior science.
For today's policy and decision makers, alluding to either of these concepts as a consideration or reason for action does nothing but extend the fallacy of an ancient hoax devised by tyrants, kings, popes and mullahs.
The Bible, Torah, Quran and other religious tomes are compendiums of anecdotal recollection and biased interpretation. The original audiences for these stories were childlike in their mentality and vulnerable to the idea of something much better in an afterlife compared to the squalor and suffering they endured in this one. Those fables were lessons in behavior that served their masters well in keeping the rabble from disturbing their sumptuous serenity. Their most absurd claim, accepted by the masses, was their divine descent from the gods themselves and ergo, the heredity of power.
The wars, struggles, painful and tragic confrontation of peoples in the name of some religious belief are a sham. Territorial and economic imperatives have always been at the root of all disputes between sovereign and not so sovereign states. The feverish rants of the masses are encouraged by their masters who manipulate a perceived offense to the faithful for their own purposes. Even in today's "civilized" society, that so many are enraptured by the idea of heaven and hell speaks to the dependence of human being on something out of nothing.
When the Vatican becomes a hospital and sanctuary for the hungry and homeless, I may begin to believe in the indomitable spirit of human kind. I do believe in a greater presence beyond this life, although not those illustrated and hallowed figures of bearded saints floating above the clouds that were conjured by the limited imagination of their congregants. My sense suggests something much larger, much more vast and disinterested. The cosmos demonstrates the concept of free will in every moment of time as stars are born with a fury of elemental ignition and ultimately collapse into the vortex of a black hole. That design, as far as we know, is true throughout our universe. A very similar pattern of existence to our own limited lives. Between birth and death, we choose our own way from one end to the other and as in the cosmic pattern, we become a part of that eternal scheme as do all things. If we are moral and loving, it is because we have recognized that those qualities serve us best in life; that anger and hate are non productive and self destructive. If there is such a thing as a soul, it is the resonance of the universe that makes up our entire being, hearkening us back to the beginning.