Oh, I see, now you want to condemn people for stuff someone else wrote down thousands of years ago that they think is immoral. Great story.

You just really want to find something to condemn religious people for, huh.

You still haven't answered how a religious person can believe there is a god, that he knows everything cares about everyone's well being, and that he gave humans a list of things to do in order to live the best way, and then just say "nahh" to it.

How. does. that. make. any. ****ing. sense.

If they truly, truly believed what they say they believe above, what grounds do they have to reject the littany of things asked of them in the holy book? God knows everything, remember? He knows how best to live, remember? Simply discarding one of his requests on your supposedly whimsical and ignorant human preferences in relation to god is the most ****ing self defeating idea I have ever heard of.

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The point I (and probably rizeagainst) am trying to make is that there is a logical pathway from religion in general to violence.
Whether or not individuals or groups of individuals follow this pathway is a different matter but there is no doubt about the fact that some have followed it and some will follow it. Therefore religion poses a potential threat to the human life. I don't think there is anything to argue about here.

Yeah, people do this all the time. Well, they don't tend to write their own prescriptions, but they will take whatever over-the-counter meds they want and whatever prescription meds they or someone in their house has lying around. Laugh at it and think it as stupid as you want, that doesn't mean it's not happening everyday anyway.

Just like the above, it doesn't matter if it makes any sense to you. The point is that the vast majority of people who identify themselves as religious are not using the religion for violence. Here, I'm a Jew. You can find parts of Leviticus that sound cruel and violent. Guess what -- I DON'T DO THOSE THINGS. You may want me to in some sick, twisted sense. You may think that I'm a bad Jew or not a Jew at all. It doesn't matter -- the point is, picking out that verse to show that Judaism is violent is ridiculous since real Jews like me aren't practicing that verse.

If you are instead targeting only those who follow their religious texts perfectly, then:
1) How many people do you think you're targeting?
2) Are you fine with the rest of us practicing as we were since we're not being violent?

They don't think they should follow it. You don't think they should follow it. So what exactly are you condemning them for? For not following something they shouldn't follow? Because they might have believed something they don't actually believe? Your view is an incoherent mess. You are so convinced that religion is always wrong that you have to make up phantom beliefs to condemn religious believers for having when they don't actually have them and you acknowledge they don't actually have them.

The argument you are making is --
' .....but hockey doesn't cause concussions because the goalie is playing hockey and he never gets a concussion. It's getting your head driven into the ice by some men pushing the rules to the limit that causes concussions. Hockey is a safe game. In fact, there's a little league game where they ban contact and it's almost impossible to get a concussion, so it's not hockey, it's how it's played. '
And, yes, you do extrapolate from widespread specifics or even from rarer but extreme specific to the general case.
"My grandfather smoked for 60 years and he never got cancer therefore smoking isn't dangerous" is foolish. That there are exceptions or something only occurs sometimes is not the test of 'cause'.

I'm not trying to explain how this makes sense to you. I and others have attempted this many times and failed. I am pointing out that it is simply a FACT that many religious people a) believe there is a god b) believe God knows everything c) believe god cares about everyone's well-being d) believe God gave a list of commands on how to live to humans and e) don't actually follow all those commands.

You can't make sense of (e) because you have incredibly narrow and implausible views about religion. However, (e) is still a fact. Your views about religion can't change reality and suddenly make it the case that all religious people actually do follow all those immoral commands you are always quoting.

And if you say that they must then not actually believe (a) - (d) if they don't do (e), then you'll have to give up your vitriol because what you actually condemn religious people for is believing (a) - (d). And if you claim then that they aren't actually religious if they don't believe (a) - (d), then why do you rail so much about religion since almost zero people are then actually religious?

Your statements on hockey are all correct. It is stupid to tell someone who is a goalie or playing in a no contact little league game that they shouldn't because they'll get a concussion. In the same way, it is stupid to tell a Quaker or liberal Protestant, or some other similar religious person that they shouldn't practice their religion or that their religion is wrong or violent because some other religion causes people to be violent, or even that religion in toto correlates with violent proclivities.

The reason you shouldn't smoke is because smoking nicotine has the same effect on everyone of increasing their likelihood of getting cancer. This is simply not true of religion--some forms of religion do not increase the likelihood that a person will become violent.

I argue a -> e all the time, it's rather obvious. That does not lead to the conclusion you claim. My uncle did smoke ...

But you are claiming the statement "Hockey is a dangerous game ..." is false. ( because the goalie rarely, if ever, gets a concussion).

edit: the statement "religion is bad, or dangerous for society." does NOT mean that each individual religious person in the world is dangerous or bad ...cheeesh. this isn't a difficult concept.

The point I'm making is that this is a hopeless generalization based on a simplistic and narrow understanding of religion. I agree with you that there is a logical pathway from some religions to violence. I don't agree with you that there is a logical pathway from all religions to violence. And I don't think that all religions have some feature in common that allows us accurately generalize in the way you do here.

Part of why I find the view of religion you seem to espousing kind of boring is that it is consciously non-empirical. Instead of describing religion based on the actual behavior and beliefs of the individuals and groups of individuals who claim to be religious, you describe religious beliefs and behavior based on the writings of people who've been dead for thousands of years. If you thought these writings were somehow perfect, this might make sense. But since you don't believe this, it doesn't make any sense at all to me why you take this approach. Isn't it just obvious that our understanding of what religious people believe and how they behave should be based instead on historical and sociological studies of religion?

In my view, the importance of random verses promoting violence is an open question. It depends on how religious communities understand those verses. If they don't understand them as in fact promoting violence, then regardless of what some person who's been dead for 2000 years thought, I don't see why I should claim that those verses make that religious community more violence-prone.

You have a strangely shallow view of danger and religion. Religion is no different from other human undertakings that set the priorities in a dangerous order. "nationalism" if it is followed as "all else is tested against or build upon it" is dangerous, and there doesn't have to be one person killed yet for that to be true. It's a dangerous fundamental position to hold. Most '-isms' share that problem if they are given primacy. Religion just happens to be one of the more dangerous forms and with a formidable track record.
Hockey is "waiting for a concussion to happen", even if one never happens or if there are some games where the rules are flexed enough that it becomes rarer.

Do you seriously not watch any news from the 21st century? Listen to american politicians or church leaders, or some middle east ones. None of them look 2000 years old.

OP, you have to decide which side of the mouth you're going to run with in these discussions.
Is it- we rate religion by the writings that nobody follows to the letter.
or - we rate religion by the actions of the current followers and their stated reasons.
or - ( my view) we rate religion ( which is a general category like 'economists' or 'republicans') on it's general effect on how it's used by people in their decision making and the general good or bad results from that.

As you say, this isn't a difficult concept. Let's say there are a thousand people in the world. Let's say there are exactly 2 religions. Religion A has 300 people and Religion B has 200 adherents. Religion A causes all 300 people to be 1 SD more violent. Religion B causes all 200 to be 1 SD less violent. Now, you can come along and do a study and show that being a member of a religion correlates with higher violence. My point is that while it is certainly accurate in this world to claim that being a member of religion A causes you to be more violent, being a member of religion B doesn't. So if someone concludes from that study that being a member of a religion causes you to be more violent, they have come to a false conclusion.

Furthermore, it is inaccurate to say that in this world "religion" is dangerous or bad for society. This is because there is not some feature common to "religion" that is bad for society. Obviously our conclusion should be that there is something specific to Religion A that is bad for society.

Go back and read what I said and you'll note that I didn't draw any conclusions from this, instead I used this to show that rizeagainst's view of religion doesn't fit with reality. Since you say you accept a -> e you evidently agree with me. I'm not clear what point you're making about your uncle's smoking habits.

Not that i dont like them better then most. But id bet good money they hold a biblical view and a view they believe is from their God that i find immoral.

If you are claiming that holding a belief or ideology is potentially dangerous, then fine, I agree with you. I also think having a belief or ideology is inescapable. This means that the only issue here is a comparative one--are religious ideologies or belief systems more dangerous than non-religious ones. My claim is that there is no feature common to all religious ideologies or belief systems that can be identified as causing a greater proclivity to violence. You haven't presented such a feature. Feel free to do so.

I suspect you'll end up saying the same thing as me--some forms of religion (i.e. some religious belief systems and ideologies) do increase the likelihood of violence, and others don't.

This is where your smoking analogy breaks down: all forms of smoking nicotine increase your likelihood of getting cancer (even if you don't in fact get cancer). My claim is that it is false that all forms of religion increase your likelihood of being violent (even if you are/aren't in fact violent).

You are not understanding what I'm saying here. My point is that the importance of these verses is an open question in any particular religious community. I mean that literally--they might be important or they might not. Obviously they are important in some. However, they are not in others. Rizeagainst, et. al want to claim that they are important in all of them.

As should be clear, my view is that we generally shouldn't "rate" religion as a single category at all. Instead, we should "rate" different specific religious groups. I don't think there are many useful or accurate generalizations between liberal Presbyterians and Lubavitch Jews.

In my opinion your view is like rating the general effect on society of people born into families where they are the only child or where there are five or more children. What new useful information do we get by combining these categories rather than keeping them separate?

My guess is that you would find the average behavior and moral beliefs of Quakers more admirable than the average behavior and moral beliefs of a non-religious person.

Your error is that "Hockey is dangerous" does not mean " a goalie will get a concussion". You're reading into statements something that isn't there. You are also not looking at the underlying nature of religion that they all do share and is dangerous. You also are restricting yourself to planes-building analogies rather than, say, "the pacifist-JW's child dies a horrible and needless death".

Read NR's comments on Hillier, and he's considered one of the saner theists on here by some, to see the application of the argument from incredulity that theism 'inspires'. That's a dangerous-to-society approach. 'I don't understand it, it leads to conclusions I don't like, therefore it is wrong and I am right.

Theism, even the non-dangerous ones by your militant measure of danger, promotes this straining effect. Whether it leads to poor sanitation, childhood aids, praying for healing by a quaker, or 737 in a building, it's not the specific act that is the measure. It is the foundational work that is sanctified by religion that can spring up in endless forms of 'bad'. I doubt the Heaven's Gate crew were violent, it does seem their religion didn't serve them well and I wouldn't want my child to have joined them because OP assured me they were non-violent.

You're mangling the english language to create a position you can argue against. "Guns are dangerous in the hands of children." Does NOT mean "every gun is dangerous in every childs hand" and the fact that it doesn't mean that doesn't not make the statement false. It is the underlying basic nature of guns and children that makes the statement true.

If Sarah Palin inflammatory religion-based comments incite some formerly non-violent members of the religious crowd to violence it IS religion that gets the credit. Religion A and Religion B are surface wrinkles, why are we studying them?

You don't want to put any money on that in my case.