(November 16, 2015 at 4:08 pm)Tiberius Wrote: The problem is, you are being an ass and not realizing it.
The vast majority of Muslims are not violent. These Muslims claim to follow Islam. Whether they follow Islam to the letter or not is irrelevant; hardly any religious person follows their religion literally.
So when you blame Islam for the actions of ISIS, regular Muslims are going to take offense, and rightly so, because to them, Islam does not teach the kind of things that ISIS is doing. That should be obvious to you based on the fact that most Muslims are not violent; there is clearly something else at work, and that is fundamentalism, fanaticism, and extremism. If you want to blame something, blame those things. They have the power to corrupt any religion, any belief system, not just Islam.
Honestly, there's not a very good analogy for atheists, because we don't have religious beliefs, but try this one. It's like when people blame atheists for the atrocities that Mao committed, because Mao's policies were atheistic and anti-religious. Of course, nothing in atheism states that we should ban religion or arrest religious people. Rather, it's the extremism of Mao that caused those events.
Now imagine your atheist beliefs are so important to you, you live your life by them, make decisions based on them, etc. You too would get offended and upset if someone told you that atheism was to blame for the killing of hundreds of people.
Thank you for the clarity, I realise I am coming across as an arse and that is what I was looking to avoid - like I say i'm not very good at getting my point across without sounding like one. I struggle to come to terms with the fact that Muslims can take offense with me blaming Islam for Isis; as far as I can see without Islam there would be no Isis. I feel that taking offense is the instant DEfence for any religious person who encounters someone who has contrasting opinions to theirs. It doesn't help that religious texts are so open to interpretation so, without them there would be no misinterpretation.
I honestly feel that I wouldn't be offended if someone said that atheism was to blame for killing people if it could be backed up with evidence.
