This is what was striking to me, that they were these really nice guys talking about how we should kill people that are "bad for society," or whatever. Happens in Christianity too, though, i guess.

I agree, being ignorant doesn't excuse being religious.

This is, of course, a lie. The muslims were often invaders, (i.e. Persia et al.); but the victors get to rape history however they wish.

You have exposed yourself to be very uneducated and ignorant, you should educate yourself.

Am I mistaken tho?

No, you're good. If I call something racist then that makes it racist.

But I mean, really, how prejudice am I for saying I think Islam is worse than Christianity; I like the Voldemort vs. sauron comparison made earlier.

I'm still confused about this.

How are you measuring this? By the ratio of people whose views you find obnoxious?

Here's another metric: body count

Christians 20th century: WWI, WWII, atomic bomb, France in Algeria, US kills 5 mil in East Asia. Total: funeral pyre stacked to the moon.

Muslims: Iran-Iraq war, Indonesia massacres 1965, 500k, Indonesian genocide in East Timor, Armenian genocide. Are any others in same category? Total: funeral pyre stacked to stratosphere.

Conclusion: the religious nuts with the stronger states are worse.

The difference is I find that pleasant but somewhat fundamental Christians often have libertarian influences, so for example they disagree with people being gay but don't want to take legal action against them (although they may want the 'freedom' to deny them business services). A pleasant but somewhat fundamental Muslim tends to support a perceived Sharia dictate to have practising homosexuals executed.

Another example is acceptance of apostasy as capital crime in Islamic countries whereas very few Christians would support such a law.

So, yes, there appears to me to be a greater support and acceptance of barbaric laws and punishments amongst Muslims, on religious grounds.

On the other hand, were I a visitor in a strange country, the chances of me being invited in for tea by a complete stranger would be greater in an Islamic country. So you know, there's that.

Cwocwoc is pathologically unable to not selective quote. It is actually so bad that responding to him with anything more than one sentence is pointless.

In this particular case in point we can even see that selective quoting is lying, as he cuts out sentences to paint my post into the exact opposite of what I'm actually saying.

Just going straight for the body count claim, WWII was not religiously motivated. I'm not laying the millions of dead at the church door any more than I'm blaming "atheism" for Stalins murderous depredations.

Every time he posts I'm reminded of someone's eternally applicable rebuttal, phrased in the form of a question: "Cwoc, are you ever right about anything?".

This is good but of course it doesn't hold true all the time. I'm sure there are plenty of christians that would like to see us living under the equivalent of sharia law, and then there's the mormon church anti-gay marriage political action.

As for not being able to separate religions influence on a culture: of course this is true, but religion does have an undeniable influence on societies. Case in point there are modern laws against the caste system in india, but the religious influence is still so strong that it still exists.

As an atheist I find it interesting that I'm not allowed to make value judgements against religions without being a bigot. For what it's worth I would say christianity is worse than Hinduism.

I call BS.
1. What part of Europe besides the Iberian peninsula did Muslim ever rule? (*)
2. The European legal systems are mostly influenced by the ancient Romans. At least that would explain why I had to take a semester of Roman legal history in law school and Islamic legal history wasn't even offered.

(*) Are you referring to the Ottoman Empire?

As you see it and you don't see it because you are not knowledgeable about European history and the influence of Islam.


So it wasn't on your curriculum. That's not surprising and you really should try to understand that school syllabuses do not cover everything. You should learn to be sceptical and find out things for yourself. It's not difficult now there's an internet-full of knowledge in front of you.

You posted it and you appear unwilling to defend your position. Do you expect us to copy ALL of your post whilst only addressing sections of it which are relevant ? How come you feel that you are equipped to judge on the effects of all religions over the last few thousand years ? Are you an expert on the history of all societies over thousands of years ?!?! And why do you rank them ? That's seems a pointless exercise in ill-informed generalisation in other words bigotry.

What do you think ignorance does excuse?

Pretty sure Christianity doesn't condone honer killing. For those that don't know in the Muslim religion if your child offends you you have the right to kill him or her in order to restore honor to the family. Even something as small as dating the wrong person is grounds for execution.

Not knowing things?

#

If you don't know you shouldn't have an opinion you should find out. Many posters on here have practically no knowledge or understanding of Islam yet they say it's "the worst". Apart from the principles of Islamic justice replacing the Medieval "trial by ordeal" etc in Europe the Renaissance would also probably not been possible without Islamic stewardship of knowledge.

Well i'm sure most Muslims are decent folks just like most Christians or atheist. The thing is most terrorist are Muslim and that doesn't make your religion look good. Not when they kill thousands and scream praise Allah. Does that meant Islam is a horrible religion no but it may mean that lots of it's followers are .

your not racist dude, just uninformed.

I cant think of another religion as peaceful as Islam and the funny thing is I'm Catholic , my sister is Muslim. They know middle eastern families as well and have nothing but excellent things to say about them.

Muslim families are a stepping stone for families around the world. Praying 5 times a day, honoring times like Ramadan. I find it highly impressive how faithful and honest people of Islam are. As for the extremists , they are no different then a Christian guy who blows up a planned parenthood store. They are not Muslims or Christians they are criminals. This is the consensus of any true Muslim.

Also not many folks are aware of the Najran Pact created by the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It details how Muslims are to respect Christianity, with Muhammad even saying if a Christian women wants to marry a Muslim then not only allow it, but also allow that women to pray in church You wont ever hear fox news or other Islam haters talking about the Najran Pact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christi...an#Najran_pact

If you invade someone's country that makes you the terrorist. On that score America is the the more terrorist. Of course invaded people will resist occupation and domination (although some of the countries in Europe who were invaded by the Nazis didn't seem to make much of an effort lol).

Huh. Religious motivation was deeply embedded in the war. Talk to a veteran. Wars have a mix of motivations, and Muslim wars are caused by the usual mix of reasons of state, domestic politics, economics etc. What you are doing is simply defining one set of wars as religious and another as not. That's cheating. Similarly, if the actors are atheist, you say that has nothing to do with the war, but if they are Muslim, suddenly religion is the only explanation needed.

Certainly there is variation in the priority of the religious factor in wars, and how visible it is in the propaganda. But a stark division into religious/not religious is not sensible.

The "at least that would explain"-part was a poor attempt at sarcasm. The reason why I believe that the European legal system is not rooted in Islam is because I actually did study it in detail. It is based on the Roman legal system (which in turn took their queues from the Greeks and Babylonians). If anything you could say that Christian theology played a huge part in it (see eg. mens rea).

In regards to what makes a religion worse:
Is the deciding factor the dogma of the religion or what the faithful actually believe?

For example:
If the catholic church condemns contraception but 98% (random number) of the believers are fine with it what do we look at for deciding if catholicism is a good or bad religion?

This isn't specifically a Muslim/Christianity issue, and I'm pretty sure has no basis on any religious text. There's plenty of history of this throughout Asia and Latin America in modern times too. Do some research on Dowry deaths or bride burning if you want to be further disgusted. If you want to look back the Romans were kind of big on this idea too.

However this is a cultural issue rather than one of religion.