If religions were a nice thing their extremists would be extremely nice.
This is not what we see.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Have you ever been to a majority Muslim country? I have. Indonesia is a supposedly "moderate" Muslim country. And you watch what you say when you're in public unless you have a death wish.

I lived in Iran for four years, under the regime of the Shah. The country was 99% Muslim. I was able to, and did regularly, attend religious services from most Christian denominations. Granted that under the Islamic government matters have changed quite a bit, my point is that the Muslims aren't inherently intolerant or extremist.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand was very strict, and yes, we had to watch what we said.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Have you ever been to a majority Muslim country? I have. Indonesia is a supposedly "moderate" Muslim country. And you watch what you say when you're in public unless you have a death wish.

Actually I have been there. It's a tourist destination after all, with discos and all the usual stuff in it's urban regions. My nephew will leave for Indonesia within the next couple of weeks, to attend an art exhibition in Kuala Lumpur.

Should you give a public speech about Mohammed being a prick, probably not, but I certainly didn't watch my tongue with every step I took. It also didn't enter my mind at any time, that it would be a good idea to slight their religion. I didn't think about it at all, to tell the truth.

I have been to other muslims countries as well, such as Turkey or Marocco or Bosnia. Each one is vastly different to the other, which only goes to show, we're not talking about a homogenous mass, but about people with different cultures, who happen to have the same basic religion. Basic because there are just as many sects within Islam as there are in christianity.

I'm wondering if it could be the case that some fundamentalists want to live in the world described by their book, rather than the world as it actually is. Kind of like someone who is stuck in the past and is forever wishing things would get back to "how they used to be", except they have adopted a fictional version which they think suits them better than the world they experience.

My reasoning for this is that fundamentalism seems to be literally trying to pull us back into the dark ages. Science is to be rubbished, along with anything else that stands in the way. Also fundamentalists seem to yearn for the visceral "justice" of the past. It seems to be pulling towards the ultimate of dictatorships and lack of free thought, which of course is exactly what dogmatic religion represents. They seem to want very simple rules, and extreme rewards and punishments.

That's the impression I get, anyhow.

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As for moderates, I found this Sam Harris video which pretty much exactly sums up my concerns about them.

http://youtu.be/4Zp5BIvK_Rk

I certainly dont think all muslims are the same, or that they are all equally to blame. Of course not. The moderates are infinitely nicer people and offer no threat of their own. My stance is just that they act as a barrier to communication, as described much better by Sam in the video above. They validate the very idea of religion, making it an acceptable delusion rather than an insane superstition. I don't advocate any action towards them at all, just for them to consider whether their weak-sauce religious version is worth the shielding of the fundies. I understand some people don't think this is a thing, but I certainly feel it is.

(January 2, 2015 at 3:01 pm)robvalue Wrote: My stance is just that they act as a barrier to communication, as described much better by Sam in the video above. They validate the very idea of religion, making it an acceptable delusion rather than an insane superstition. I don't advocate any action towards them at all, just for them to consider whether their weak-sauce religious version is worth the shielding of the fundies. I understand some people don't think this is a thing, but I certainly feel it is.

Yeah, good luck with intellectually communicating that to a farmer in rural Alabama and even better luck communicating that to a farmer in eastern Anatolya or Egypt or any rural region of the Middle East.

That's the problem I have with Harris. He's an intellectual. More power to him, but actually he should try to walk a mile in the shoes of the people he's talking about. Life hasn't changed that much in the Islamic hinterlands for the last few centuries. And that's not a religious problem but a development and cultural problem. People won't get secular just because some intellectual urges them to. They will get secular once they are more educated and provided with actual opportunities.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: It does stop with ideology. To use your Nazi example, I'm not a bigot if I oppose Nazism.

But you are a bigot if you oppose Germans because some of them were/are Nazis. Being a Muslim is more akin to being a German than to Nazi ideology. The vast majority of Muslims are people who just happened to be born to Muslim parents. They didn't choose to be Muslim, they were indoctrinated. For many, the idea of leaving Islam is nearly unthinkable.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Is Islam that dangerous? I don't know. I'd like to have that frank discussion without it being preemptively silenced.

When you say you can't have that discussion without being silenced, you're being disengenuous. It seems to be some kind of code for 'I can't make over-broad generalizations without being called on them and no way am I going to be more specific'.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Why does Salmon Rushdie have to hide? Why does Ayaan Hirsi Ali need bodyguards? Why was Theo Van Gogh murdered?

Islamic extremism.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Why is it that if you criticize Islam, you're taking your life into your own hands?

That's hardly always the case. People openly criticize Islam all the time without serious consequence. Your list is infinitesimal compared to the list of people who have openly criticized Islam without having to go into hiding or receiving a single threat.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Have you ever been to a majority Muslim country? I have. Indonesia is a supposedly "moderate" Muslim country. And you watch what you say when you're in public unless you have a death wish.

Indonesia is more an example of 'less extreme than Saudi Arabia' than of 'moderate', IMHO.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Atheists who live in small towns in America hide their non-belief as well but not out of fear of their lives but rather out of fear of social consequences.

Atheists who live in small towns in third world Christian countries might ought to look out for their lives as well. I wonder if the correlation between the danger you're in for not conforming to the majority ideology or religion has more to do with whether your country is an undeveloped mess than exactly which ideology or religion is on top?

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Perhaps they'd lose their livelihood or they might lose their friends. I've even heard of stories of harassment that atheists have received in small town America. I've not heard of any in fear of their lives.

There are two or three who should have been, but alcohol was probably a bigger factor in the outcome being fatal.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Now 500 years ago, atheists would have been killed for being atheists.

When the whole world was an undeveloped mess.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Christianity has managed to more-or-less peacefully integrate with civilization.

It wasn't peaceful.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Can Islam be reformed in a similar way? I don't know but I'd like to have that discussion without being silenced.

If you make their scriptures the problem, reform is impossible.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: What I don't buy, which is what this thread is about, is the flippant "oh, that's just the radicals" excuse.

It's not an excuse. It's a literal fact that the Muslims who are terrorists are radicals. You're the one who seems to have a problem with that fact.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: The radicals in any religion ARE the religion.

Nonsense. If any group in a religion IS the religion, it's the majority.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: Show me the radicals and I'll show you the religion in its purest form.

You seem to be using 'radical' and 'fundamentalist' interchangeably. They are not synonyms. There are plenty of Islamic fundamentalists who are not radicals, and plenty of Muslim radicals who are not fundamentalists.

rad·i·cal/ˈradək(ə)l/
adjective
1.(especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.
2.advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social reform; representing or supporting an extreme section of a political party.
3.of or relating to the root of something, in particular.
4.very good; excellent.

noun
1.a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform; a member of a political party or part of a party pursuing such aims.
2.a group of atoms behaving as a unit in a number of compounds.
3.the root or base form of a word.
4.a quantity forming or expressed as the root of another.

(December 31, 2014 at 7:43 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: At least that's my conclusion so far. Maybe I'm wrong. Show me.

Maybe if you got on with the conversation instead of getting stuck on the notion that we're not letting you have it? When people disagree with you, they are going to criticize what you say. You can get hung up on that if you want to, but it's not preventing you from moving to Step 2. Step 3 is, of course, profit (!).

(January 2, 2015 at 3:30 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: The vast majority of Muslims are people who just happened to be born to Muslim parents. They didn't choose to be Muslim, they were indoctrinated. For many, the idea of leaving Islam is nearly unthinkable.

Indoctrinated takes it too far in my opinion. Just look at rural environments in our countries. Religion is a tradition there. And it's even more so in Islamic countries which are for the most parts less developed, former colonies and have less of a broader education. Some have the same living standards as they had when they were still part of the Osman empire. Many can't even read or write when it comes to remote regions and owning a few sheep is as far as they will climb the social ladder. God is the only constant in their lives.

(January 2, 2015 at 3:01 pm)robvalue Wrote: I certainly dont think all muslims are the same, or that they are all equally to blame. Of course not. The moderates are infinitely nicer people and offer no threat of their own. My stance is just that they act as a barrier to communication, as described much better by Sam in the video above. They validate the very idea of religion, making it an acceptable delusion rather than an insane superstition. I don't advocate any action towards them at all, just for them to consider whether their weak-sauce religious version is worth the shielding of the fundies. I understand some people don't think this is a thing, but I certainly feel it is.

I often hear the notion expressed that the 'moderates' have something to do with abetting the behavior of the 'fundamentalists'. What exactly is the imagined scenario if the moderates weren't there?

I think it's more the case that people gravitate into or out of fundamentalism or moderation based on their own predispositions. Without the moderates, you'd just have the people who used to be moderates divided into fundamantalists and not-at-alls, with no-man's-land between.

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(January 2, 2015 at 3:40 pm)abaris Wrote: Indoctrinated takes it too far in my opinion. Just look at rural environments in our countries. Religion is a tradition there. And it's even more so in Islamic countries which are for the most parts less developed, former colonies and have less of a broader education. Some have the same living standards as they had when they were still part of the Osman empire. Many can't even read or write when it comes to remote regions and owning a few sheep is as far as they will climb the social ladder. God is the only constant in their lives.

To indoctrinate someone is to teach them to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. That is how I meant it.

I don't care, I'm gonna go kill all the moderates I think.

I find the term "radical" stupid, because radicals are the people who actually believe what they profess to believe. That's just being consistent. Moderates are people who pretend to believe it, but are much more comfortable overruling or not even learning their god's rulings.

They are only radical in comparison to people who aren't taking it seriously.

Actually let's kill them all. Kill everyone who doesn't look exactly like me. Kill until my chainsaw seizes up and my eyes are caked with blood. Kill until I forget who I'm killing or why. I just need the blood.