I doubt Mightyboosh would dispute that Christianity has the capacity to be just a bad a religion as Islam. Thus I find your argument most likely to be based on willful misrepresentation - which is tiresome.

You did, however, manage to say "sweeping generalization" again. Is there a prize for this or something?

Accurately calling a statement precisely what it is is a good thing. And no, mightyboosh was explicitly using this period of relative nonviolence 2000 years ago (in contrasts to periods of extensive violence) to try and argue for the alleged superior of christianity, hardly "just as bad".

So essentially, somebody can make an argument - but you'll just paraphrase from the conclusion and claim that was all that was ever uttered.

Good to know, and it sure explains a lot. It also saves me a lot of trouble, because now I know this was never about the argument to begin with.

My criticism with you was always that you were taking a very narrow metric about court systems in select muslim majority countries (which I didn't disagree with) and used it to defend this sweeping generalization that was not, and could not, be justified by such a narrow metric.

This might be unfair, but uke_master's posts in this thread have seemed to me to have always lurking as a motivation some moral or political view about how the world should be. Naturally, this makes me suspicious of his arguments.

Specifically, uke_master has said a few times that the claims made about Islam in this thread are not only wrong, but also offensive. Now, presumably they would still be offensive even if they were not wrong. Would uke_master in that case still object to them being stated?

Furthermore, if I understand him correctly, uke_master's view isn't that Christianity and Islam are equally bad, but that we don't know if they are equally bad--that insufficient evidence has been presented to justify one side or the other. But in that case, why is he foregrounding a concern about offending some group? Shouldn't we have as our first allegiance the truth of the matter?

No. Evaluating things with an objective standard (in the case, "worse" should refer to a point along a spectrum from worst possible human suffer to best possible human happiness) does not make you a racist. I actually think it is disingenuous to say that Islam is not in a league of its own based on the above standard.

Sam Harris had a great lecture concerning this, among other things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLL5V9kRfU

I think that if a statement is particularly offensive, then it is owed heightened scrutiny to its truth value before being casually claimed, which is very much in contrast to a particularly low level of scrutiny that has been - and often is - applied to this specific question. And while I think the claim is both unsubstantiated (and, if you read on, unsubstantiatable) as well as offensive, my primary objection in this thread was to the former with the later being important to say, but ancillary at best to my objections.

As to saying true offensive statements, frankly, I just don't believe someone suggesting they are on a genuine quest allied with truth on this question. If they really are, then sure, utter whatever true statement you want when it is in this context. But if one is uttering an offensive statement to make some sociopolitical statement (ironically something you accused me of doing) then I am much less confident of its appropriateness.


I have not presented it (iirc) in this thread, but I would actually make the stronger claim not just that we don't know the answer to "is islam worse than christianity" but further that we have not even established basic guidelines we can agree on that make such a statement meaningful. I believe that religions are really big, broad concepts with numerous connotations with billions of followers and a myriad of different traditions and subtraditions and ways of thinking about it spread around the globe. That you can meaningfully reduce all that to a statement like "islam is worse than christianity" seems very unlikely.

In particular, I would reject very narrow approaches that try to identify one single factor as a justification for this very broad claim. For instance, my criticism of tame_deuce is that he was using a very narrow proxy (court systems in islamic principles) in place of the "worse". Presumably if one said "these are my metrics for how one religion might be worse than another" it could be a rather objective measure to determine the answer in that case. For instance, one could say "the religion that is worse has killed the most in terrorist attacks" and then could in principle count those killed and get an answer. But I would reject the idea that this true fact is a meaningful indication of one religion being worse or better than the other.

I can't imagine what this would be.

Except you have not offered some objective standard. Even if I buy your framing where a religion sits at a point on a scale (I don't), you have not provided any shred of an objective way to say which of islam and christianity is higher on the scale. You have only told me the highest and lowest points on the scale, not how to compare intermediary points.

This post is nothing but the assertion that islam is worse, coupled with the assertion that you are being objective (and thus not racist) about it without actually giving any clue as to what this objective measure is.

OrP, I could not have asked for a more perfect example of the level of scrutiny being given to this question.

Because modern Islam represents the polar opposite of human decency and what any civilized society should aspire to be. If the standard is maximizing the well-being of human beings, it's really unfair and incorrect to assert equality (which I assume is what you're promoting; I didn't read the whole thread) in terms of harm done. I said it's objective because my assessment of its net effect is based solely on whether or not it adds to human misery.

I think it is necessary to oppose positions on bad or non-existent evidence (aka, all faith claims). Irrationality and delusion exist in all religions, but to assert that that the some specific irrational claims aren't more harmful than others is an outright lie. It's also counter-productive to the assimilation of skepticism and rational thinking because the equal opposition to all faith claims inherently alienates some religious people with whom you may otherwise agree on certain issues (like the horrors of Islam).

Quite simply, even the craziest Christians aren't hijacking planes and flying them into buildings. Maybe if were living in the dark ages, you'd have a better case.

Wow, do you really imagine that yours is of a high standard? lol.

Also, in the paragraph above and below you misrepresent my position. My position is one of asking 'IS islam worse than christianity?" which you have changed to "islam IS worse than christianity". A statement.

A simple mistake or a straw man? From a personal point of view I'd like you to correct that please, I wouldn't take such a definitive stance on a subject so complex. From a debating point of view it's almost irrelevant though since in either case you're failing to provide any compelling evidence to support that it's not the most brutal, bigoted and suppressive religion on the planet.

Yes it would be. As pointed out though, no one is saying that.

No pun intended but jesus christ... how can you not understand that that was my starting point, my line of questioning wasn't limited to nor was it going to end there, I've said this multiple times. It was simply the first issue that occurred when asking myself which of the two religions is worse?

Are you just not reading what I'm saying?

lol, yes being a FOX viewer would explain a lot but in this case it doesn't as I positively hate that network. Bill O'Reilly might be one of the most hateful figures on TV right now.

Not a new theory to me. Not sure if I really want to digress into that.

I'm not ignoring Christianity, it has it's own problems. The question is which is 'worse'? I'm English btw and you don't need to discredit GW to me, he'd be top of the list that Bill O'reilly was second on. For the record, I'm an anti-theist, I have no reason to defend one religion over another, I despise them all for the misery they cause and the way they limit us as a species.

Hold on, you are trying to tell me that you were ONLY asking a question, and did NOT make a statement? Huh.
No, Mightyboosh, you very much DID make the statement. You heaped a bunch of bad things about islam, then concluded that islam was one of the worst. As such I can very much correctly judge your use of "islam started violently unlike christianity" as a basis for your declarative claim of islam being one of the worst religions.

I suppose you do have one out in that your declarative statement only says "one of the worst" and doesn't declare worse than christianity, but given how the OP is explicitly comparing to christianity, and that you say "unlike christianity" in your post, I think drawing to that out would be pretty weak. You made the declarative statement, fess up. Also note that even if you don't think you tried to make this statement when you clearly did, many others have exactly typed out that statement to the letter so saying "noone is saying that" is just objectively wrong.

I don't care if it is the first or 400th issue you thought of. I submit it is a horrific piece of evidence by which to compare the two and to be used as evidence for one being worse than the other. Now you apparently don't even know whether you are or are even asserting anything.

So this is the first time you have given an example of what way islam actually is bad. Before this all you did was assert that islam was bad, that islam was the "polar opposite of human decency" and other similarly ridiculous claims, while pretending you were being "objective" despite not actually giving any evidence as to why these claims were true.

Now that you have finally actually said something, unsurprisingly it is among the worst pieces of evidence possible to find. The very worst actions by the worst extremists of a religion of 1.6 billion people should not and can not be held as an indictment of the religion as a whole. The simple fact is that the craziest christians have done absolutely horrific and unspeakable things, including acts of the brutalist terrorism. But I don't think either should be considered against their religions. If all you have to support your extreme claims like "polar opposite of human decency" is the worst actions by the worst nonrepresentive extremists, there is nothing left to sya.

'I have no problem considering Islam the worst' is not the same as 'Islam is the worst' and in the interests of debating it (At the point that I actually decided I'd like to debate it rather than the one comment I made earlier in the thread) I came at this from an 'Is Islam the worst' angle, rather than a 'is Christianity the worst' angle because I believe the evidence points at Islam being the worst. It's just my starting position and I am open to being dissuaded.

I started with the manner in which the two religions got started as the beginning point of a comparison, not a 20o0 year old 'piece of evidence', just one point amongst the many I assumed would follow. As I may have said before and as you resolutely refuse to understand.

Don't' bother answering that though because as always with you, this has turned into you ducking and diving over semantics. Meh. It's not even fun.

I am genuinely confused. You believe that "the evidence points at Islam being the worst" and you "consider Islam the worse" but you don't believe "Islam is the worst"? I dont even know what semantic hair splitting you are trying to achieve here, but if anyone is ducking and diving over semantics I feel it has to be you.

I consider men to be of greater strength than woman, and the evidence points to men being stronger than women, but I am not claiming men are stronger than women. What am I missing?

Its not Buddhism doing it its people using Buddhism for political purposes doing it. Isn't that how thats supposed to work...

Sure. That's why I wrote Buddhists and not Buddhism but it was to illustrate the point that stereotypes are not always correct and clumsily expressed. The same reply applies to Turbulenc3. Although the 9/11 hijackers were nominally Muslims they were not very observant and the acts they committed are prohibited by the religion.

Yeah i know. Anything good religion does it gets credit for, anything bad religion does something else, anything else gets credit. Pretty convenient.

Also you dont get to tell people what their religion is and what it is not. They get to tell you. Thats how religion works, everyone's got their own variants.

And I can't win. When I'm certain I get lambasted, when I express doubt and allow for the possibility that someone might have an argument that could convince otherwise, I get lambasted.

Do you want have a conversation about which of the two religions is 'worse' or not? If I suggest that maybe we should define criteria for 'worse' before arguing the rest of it would I be failing in some whole new way?

It's a fact that men have on average 40% more muscle mass than women. If I had such conclusive evidence regarding which of the religions was the 'worst', we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If you have evidence as conclusive as that in your analogy for why Islam isn't the worst (because one of the extant religions has to be), then present it. If you don't want to start with the quite different beginnings of the religions themselves, then where do you want to start?

Bad things are proscribed in most religions. If you do bad things you are not following the religion. That's why atheists with a conscience who want to be good people should study religion.

Should we eat beef and eschew pork, or vice versa?

I said study. I did not say follow slavishly.

Which brings us to an elegant question.

Consider that the Abrahamic religions for the most part have the same rules. On a worldwide basis, the quantifying variable being "number of countries you are likely to be punished by the relevant religion in"; Which religion would be the worst one to transgress against?



This is a fairly easily answerable question, merely by 10 minutes of wikipedia usage.

Being tired of inane insults and meaningless characterizations, I'll let people solve this one on their own.

It's only "elegant" in your head. Religions don't punish people. People punish people. The country with the highest level of people in prison is the US I believe.

There you go again telling people what their religious values are. Kind of disrespectful.

If all religions are good and all religious values are good (bad stuff comes form something else) why not follow them slavishly?

There are a lot of important caveats to "bad things are proscribed in most religions". In fact a lot of bad things are prescribed in religions, but have became interpretated as "metaphorical".

Take Tariq Ramadan for example. In a debate with then French president Sarkozy Tariq said a "moratorium" should be placed on stoning of women (and men) for adultery;but why a moratorium? Why not say that stoning people is wrong as Sarkozy exasperatedly exclaimed? Because, Tariq said, that would place reason above revelation which would be hubris. This bring your values to the text and interpretate in light of modern values is extremely dissatisfying because 1. It's obvious that the concept of God has merely become a canvas to paint a person's own morally autonomous morality on, while simultaneously being sanctimonious to atheists who point that out and
2. It leads to clusterf**cks like Tariq who says reason can't triumph revelation so he's stuck keeping stoning as a possibility while implicitly acknowledging that it's immoral.

It would be much more satisfying to admit that religion was simply a way to codify and instill civilizational values at a specific point and specific time with all the attendant issues of it being a human endeavor such as prophets always getting to write their own rules or whatever.