Antitheist Ex-Marine To Hold Draw Muhammad Rally in AZ Friday

[DeistPaladin]

Radicals do not define a movement, to the rationally- minded. One has to be terribly blinkered to se a sliver of a minority as representative ... that's like upholding Stalin and his Chekists as representative of leftists.

Silly, just bloody silly.

Well, let me explain it in more detail and let's use a non-religious example. 

Let's say you're on a game show. You have to predict the political views of two people. The only information you're given is one proudly says he's a "radical libertarian" and the other says he's a "moderate libertarian". You are then asked a series of questions pertaining to their views on various issues of government involvement with the economy, regulation, education, civil liberties or the "safety net". 

The radical you can pretty well predict. He might surprise you in a few ways but you can fairly confidently predict that he'll tow the line when it comes to anything that pertains to libertarian ideology. 

With the "moderate" you might as well be blindfolded and throwing darts at a board. He could believe anything. For example, maybe he thinks that "some" government safety net is a good thing, just not too much, and your guess is as good as anyone else's as to how much that is. Those who self-identify with "moderate" labels tell you next to nothing about what they believe.

In sum:

• Radicals believe wholeheartedly. 
  
• Moderates kind of believe "...but..." 
  

Hence, show me the radicals of any ideology and I'll show you what that ideology in its purest form teaches. Radical Muslims are Muslims. Moderate Muslims are sort of Muslim ...ish. 

This is why "oh, don't worry, those are just the tiny fringe of radicals" falls flat with me. Even if we assume that they really are only a tiny fringe of the ideology, that only tells me only those who really take their Islamic faith seriously will turn into homicidal maniacs. Thanks but that's not a comfort. 

And Capt.Awesome makes a refreshingly astute point to ask what Muslim-majority country represents these "moderate Muslims"? Indonesia, perhaps? I've been to this country and trust me, you don't want to be a non-Muslim, a non-believer or gay in this country. 

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And now, for everyone fearing the big bad Islamistic conspiracy against our precious Western societies, here are some facts, based on Europol and FBI statistics. Less than 2 percent of terrorist attacks in the EU have been motivated by religion. That doesn't even say, the lot of the less than 2 percent have been motivated by Islam.

This kind of logic reminds me of when Fox Noise was reporting on American casualties in W Bush's Iraq War of Aggression, that they were insignificant in comparison to the number of Americans who die in auto accidents, so really it's no big deal. 

Or the cigarette executive who once, on camera, admitted "sure smoking is dangerous but so is eating too much apple sauce." The logical fallacy he floundered on being apparently that sure, smoking is bad but really, the odds are good that you can just as easily die from something else anyway. 

I'm struggling to identify how to categorize this particular fallacy: "Sure, this is dangerous, but hey, look at all the other danger that's out there, so it's no big deal."