Islam

[The Architect Of Fate]

This has been a remarkable change for me. I'm old enough to remember when anti-gay prejudice was widespread and unashamedly expressed. 

And now it isn't as much 

The interesting thing is that the most adamantly anti-gay people were the "conservatives" who were concerned about preserving "Western values." Now the "Western values" people use anti-gay prejudice in the Middle East as proof that "the West" is superior, because we are all so tolerant. They were dragged, kicking and screaming, toward tolerance, and now they barely remember that it hasn't been eternal. 

Yup Religious conservatives did that in the name of their warped view of western values . Now western values point out anti gay hate as a means of showing that religious Conservatism of any strip is bullshit .And we weren't the ones dragged kicking and screaming i supported gays for decades before it was accepted by wider society because such irrational nonesense has no place in a humanist mindset .

This forum is educational for me, because all the other English-speaking circles I participate in are more progressive. The kind of unashamed anti-religion bigotry that Sungula and others here express would be cringe-making in progressive circles -- or seen as downright dangerous. Trump-like.  

And you have yet to show any bigotry on my part and buddy I AM A PROGRESSIVE and my views on religion are common .So bragging about your progressive clout isn't impressive 

I suspect that in a couple more decades the anti-religion bigotry will be seen in the way that anti-gay or anti-Jewish bigotry is viewed today. (That's if we can keep going forward.) 

Too bad it's not bigotry 

Mostly I'm in touch on line with progressives and scholars of various types. These are the people who were earliest in overcoming their gay prejudice. When I worked in the art world in NYC in the 1980s, it was more common to be gay than straight. We figured out when I was working at the Cloisters (the Metropolitan Museum's medieval branch), that I was the only straight white man on staff at the time. Few of these people are strongly religious themselves, but they find Dawkins-type atheism childish and anti-Muslim speeches ignorant. 

I don't care about your story time 

Now that I think of it, the only deeply religious guy I'm in touch with is a Jewish gay man. He was Allen Ginsberg's boyfriend for a long time. He teaches advanced mathematics for a living, and is also a deeply knowledgable Dante scholar. Just a splendid guy. So we can see that he's not prejudiced against STEM, homosexuality, or other religions. And his Jewish values are for him a light and a guide, and for me to say to him that theism is foolish would be unthinkable.

Nope he's still foolish . Being smart does one isn't foolish plenty of smart people have believed foolish things . And he can only live in contradiction as Judaism makes it clear Homosexulity is a sin .

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This is because you associate a religion with its worst manifestations. Islam with hand-chopping, Christianity with anti-gay belief. 

Nope i call out it's worst practices and am meet with apologist excuses or blind dississmal . Almost as if the religious don't want to see the ugliness of their chosen beliefs . 

For some reason you don't associate any religion with its best aspects -- for example, loving one's neighbor or devoting oneself to unselfish goodness. 

Because they are superficial and empty at best and no has ever needed to be religious to hold those views . 

All religions have both sides, and the fact that you see the bad as more intrinsic than the good tells us more about you than about the religion.

Yup it tells you were sane 

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Yes, this is a good point. 

Religions evolve and grow, like anything else. And a big one, like Christianity or Islam, is full of such different versions that there is very little we can say that is true of all of them. 

Nope this IS Islam and no there plenty we can say of them all 

As always, it is unfortunate that so many people look at such a large and diverse group and declare that its worst members are its essence.

Because it generally is 

So stuff your righteous crap

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Over centuries the arc of religion bends ever so slightly towards humanism.

But only ever in contradiction with itself