Pure Brutality

[Sheldon]

That looks like a no true Scotsman fallacy to me. I can see how blindly following religious ideologies that have archaic and pernicious doctrine and dogma, can lead directly to acts of cruelty barbarity and indifference to suffering. 

Now while I can see that someone who does not believe in any deity, is just as capable of being cruel, barbarous and indifferent to suffering, atheism itself has no ideology or doctrine that must be followed, so it would follow that this is simply a personal choice. amd nothing directly to do with atheism.

I doubt that Peter Sutcliffe or Ted Bundy believed in mermaids or unicorns, but no one would dream of suggesting this lack of belief motivated their terrible crimes.

Part 1: Yes, and this is why I decided to be involved with atheism in the first place. If I died today and had to reincarnate, I would rather incarnate in a non-theistic environment rather than a more theistic / mystical environment. Simply because it is better to have no understanding of religion rather than a dogmatized understanding that will need to be corrected in later periods of your life.
 
This said: I don’t care about any of the more superficial / visible aspects of a spiritual life. My understanding of religion is the “Religio” meaning “to bind back”. I believe in this Inner Phenomenon over which no person or entity has a monopoly that is available for us to connect regardless of the spiritual doctrine we have been indoctrinated with as a child.
 
In fact, many more contemporary writers will tell you that typical religious indoctrination is more likely to obstruct this “reconnection” rather than facilitate it.
 
And I will develop this last idea by telling you that the times have changed. Religion as it is today was basically the best any spiritual leader could do in ancient societies that were based on farming, aristocracy and military might. In these days you needed rules, laws, fear of death, rituals, repetitions, dogmas, stories, mythologies etc. because these was an age in which people didn’t even know how to read and write.
 
And Still, if you can invest some time into these studies, you can discover (I mean us / 21st century people) the universality of the messages that were introduced by all these spiritual teachers.
 
You can try to read Wayne Dyer, the book is called “The living Wisdom of the Dao”.

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Nudger said: “I never know what you mean when you say things like this.  I suspect it's because you don't really know what you mean either.”

 
- I see myself as a lucky man. I come from a not so religious family and I got involved with this New thought” movement + Yoga philosophy + mystical Islam very quickly. So what happened to me was not a change in my mind. I still like to interpret the world in a reason and observation based manner.
 
Yet, there was a point at which I started seeing value + universalism in the core of all religious teachings. I am not saying “All religious people are absolutely right about everything”, I am saying that there is a core teaching in all religious teachings (that has been largely ignored and forgotten for the benefit of some mindless and repetitive rituals and dogmas) and that if you can get there, you can get to the almost Jungian archetypes and universal teachings that have their benefits that are beyond some simple philosophical or other mind-based approaches.
 
And I don’t think anybody should be shocked by these arguments. It’s not so complicated either
 
On Political Islam and Islamic terrorism:
 
Etiologically “Islam” means “To Surrender” (to God). So
1) “Islamism” does not even exist. It cannot possibly exist.
2) If it was as you said “God” would actually have to be some evil entity playing with humans the way a child plays with its toys.
3) There are elements in the life of Muhammad that raise many question marks. Like “Why didn’t he abolish slavery or (let’s say) Polygamy?  
 
The problem with the Prophet of Islam is that he is the most human among all great spiritual teachers. So in some cases the answer is “Maybe he could not / maybe he didn’t have that kind of power”.
 
Societies have a fabric. Some people say that Hitler was a boy-scout in comparison to Stalin. Did you know that Mao Tse Dong scarifised some 50 million people during his “cultural revolution?”
 
Great spiritual teachers don’t operate like this. Jesus, for instance, did not even flee the Romans. Yet, with the passing of the ages, he still managed to transform society and provide us (individuals all over the world) with this opportunity to learn about his message that has a deeper meaning beyond the more ritualized and dogmatic interpretations of this teachings (as I tried to explain before).
 
Sheldon: I was just saying that there are people out there who can make use of anything to turn other people into their Bt-Monkeys and feel no remorse about it.

Nothing you said directly addressed my post, or your fallacious claim? And you can't have any idea what, if anything, Jesus said, no one can. You seem to be just reeling off unevidenced subjective claims, then propping them up with more of the same?