Islam

[Belacqua]

Do you think Ilhan Omar's goodness is necessarily in spite of her religion?

I think anyone's goodness is necessarily in spite of their religion.

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

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. 

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.

[Silver]

What little good religion purports to promote is always overshadowed by the harm it generates.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think anyone's goodness is necessarily in spite of their religion.

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

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. 

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.

On the contrary, I applaud the positive aspects of religion, which is why you never hear me whinge about things like ‘cafeteria Catholics’ - I approve of that approach.

But do you really think that if Ms. Omar were to lose her faith, she’d suddenly abandon the positive tenets of her religion? Would she stop caring about poor people, for example? The notion that people are ‘good’ only because their religion tells them to be so doesn’t hold up.

‘Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But to get a good person to do bad things, THAT takes a religion.’ - Boru Forgets Who Said That.

Boru

[Abaddon_ire]

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

Because they are still doing that and worse and show no signs of stopping, or even wanting to.

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 stole those concepts from others. They didn't originate them and indeed, actively subvert such "nice" concepts. Without religion we would still have those "nice" concepts without the ludicrous religious baggage.

[GrandizerII]

I think anyone's goodness is necessarily in spite of their religion.

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

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. 

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.

I think part of it is some people tend to view religion as this fixed set of predetermined beliefs and ideals that cannot be molded by individuals and societies that incorporate it. For them, Islam (for example) is the set of beliefs that include such statements as encouraging hand-chopping and any belief that contradicts such statements is not part of Islam but derived from something external to it.

[Belacqua]

think part of it is some people tend to view religion as this fixed set of predetermined beliefs and ideals that cannot be molded by individuals and societies that incorporate it. For them, Islam (for example) is the set of beliefs that include such statements as encouraging hand-chopping and any belief that contradicts such statements is not part of Islam but derived from something external to it.

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. 

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.

[Mister Agenda]

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

[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 .

---

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 

---

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

---

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

But only ever in contradiction with itself

[The Grand Nudger]

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

Society does that.  Religion opposes it as an effect of cultural conservatism. The list of major religions alive today is an effect of radical propositions made to society in their time and place - which helps to move the chains, but becomes the new orthodoxy and the new target for conservatism at whatever point it manages to position itself as an authority.

In the broader view humanist principles-as-effect are probably bound up in human beings becoming more competent in the world, more capable of actualizing our wishes and desires and more resolved to solve our remaining problems in the same nose to the ground way we've solved so many before.

From the other angle, we do notice that humanist leanings tend to wash away when a society fails, when it's members become less competent, less capable...more frustrated and, ultimately, desperate.

[The Architect Of Fate]

So lets sum this up 

1. Religion is inherently regressive or stagnant  and only changes from outside then tries to make itself more acceptable by breaking it's own rules 

2. Religious people can be smart but can still sill religious beliefs .This of course is not isolated to religion alone but is a feature of religion . 

3. Religious people can be wonderful but this steam from themselves not their religion .If they stopped being religious 

4. All of this is fine and religious people should suffer no ill for any of the above .However they have no right to expect me to not call this out and they sure as hell don't get to impose their views on me without expecting resistance