He acts like one.

I can't buy the idea that we must despise all religions equally in order to avoid bigotry. Clearly some religions can be better than others from the point of view of a Western liberal. Quakers might be weird and I'm sure they can be as cruel as the next zealot, but I doubt many of them are confused by their scripture to wish death on apostates or homosexuals.

I could start a religion today around the core tenets of peace, love and the nuclear holocaust. It would be worse than the religion I started afterwards that called for peace, love, and not so much nuclear holocaust this time. I'll hate the first worse unless that's bigoted.

Like the other guy said, embrace the bullet and just say some forms of bigotry are good I guess. Probably easier than insisting that bigotry is not bigotry. I mean, aside from the word being taboo, is there anything about being much more intolerant of Islam that doesn't fit the standard definition of bigotry?

Public service announcement two, no major religion, including Islam, has tenets that cannot be relaxed or re-interpreted less literally to fit what the society needs or wants, except for maybe the name of the messiah or prophet. If enough people come to interpret your nuclear holocaust religion as a spiritual allegory and not a literal commandment, then you will sing its praises as one of the world's reformed religions. I will concede though that the origin variance with a nuclear holocaust religion is uniquely not good. Maybe the initial variance with the singularity religion is not going to be good either.

So now we're literally rewriting history and saying Christianity has always been totally gay for LGBTQ++ rights.

Srsly WTF is going on?

Foldn,

Is apparently knowing nothing about Islam a bug or a feature?

I'm not sure gay Christians in, for example, Russia, Nigeria or Uganda or in certain parts of the US think that Christianity has resolved it's bigotry towards gay people. What we seem to be able to do however id discern between Christians who are and who aren't bigoted without extending that courtesy to Muslims.

No he doesn't.

How are homophobes afforded a certain level of tolerance in America today? Are they supported by the majority of Americans?

If you are a prominent person in America today and come out with intolerant views, it's essentially career suicide. The only people who may be afforded some tolerance in that regard are religious leaders, and it's because most people just handwave it. If you think the regular joe-shmoe gets a pass being a homophobe in modern society, lol.

Kim Davis is still working as a clerk?

There's a difference between the percentages in the groups. Christians, in general, have changed their views on acceptance of gays in the last 30 years. If we had this conversation 30 years ago we would both probably agree that Christians are, in general, bigoted. It is very debatable today. I'll try to dig up some numbers.

http://www.pewforum.org/2016/05/12/c...-gay-marriage/

In Pew Research Center polling in 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 57% to 35%.

Since then, support for same-sex marriage has steadily grown. Based on polling in 2016, a majority of Americans (55%) support same-sex marriage, compared with 37% who oppose it.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/t...iety-morality/

Muslims overwhelmingly say that homosexual behavior is morally wrong, including three-quarters or more in 33 of the 36 countries where the question was asked.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/06/13/in...e-likely-to-su

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/c...cal-attitudes/


some interesting numbers for your argument. It seems in America Muslims have different attitudes (which doesn't surprise me).

Rather, these numbers help demonstrate why exactly we cannot treat American Muslims as though they're inherently suspicious and prone to jump into extremism and jihads. American Muslims are not necessarily more conservative than many of our country's Christians. There are a whole host of different reasons for this (including the likelihood that Muslims immigrate to the United States in the first place to get away from extreme social conservatism within their own religion). Americans (including gay Americans) who interact regularly with Muslim citizens are probably less likely to see them as being profoundly different. Because they're not—in the United States.



It's not so crazy to say that "Muslims don't like gays". The numbers overwhelmingly support the argument. There is literally not one Muslim dominated area in the world that is tolerant of homosexuals. Not one. Do you still think your argument is correct? If you had a gay child, would you be comfortable with them moving to and living in any Muslim country in the world? I sure as **** wouldn't.

So you think people should lose their jobs because of their beliefs? Do you think Trump supporters should be fired from their jobs? Where do you draw this line?

Kim Davis is a nothing nobody from nowhere. No one gives a flying **** what she thinks, and she had the courts overturn her decisions. Yeah, maybe her employers believe she had the right to her own beliefs, but they sure as hell didn't allow her to continue to act against the law of the land.

Do you think that there are no racists or homophobes in public office? You guys trip all over yourselves in defending what other people believe in certain arguments, yet when it works against you it seems you call for their jobs and their livelihoods and wish to shame them into submission.

This is why we have laws, and the rule of law stands. You can be a racist, it's not against the law, but you will not be allowed to use that in an unlawful way. Kim Davis is nothing, and her opinions mean nothing. Gay couples can, today, get marriage licenses from her. She has no power to stop them, and everyone knows it.

wil cites a poll of ALL americans and compares it to a poll of muslims, not to mention comparing marriage to 'morals'...

Srsly am I in a dream?

dereds pwns wil with one sentence and he just vomits up paragraphs again

GODDAMN THESE PEOPLE HATE MUSLIMS

though based on his amazing performance of handling logic 101 in the spank debate thread, anything is possible...

Tagline: When they're too dumb to know they're being pwned, they are...

THE UNPWNABLES

Need to get that post count up that badly huh?

Also

what do they need/want from killing gays for being gay, or stoning women to death for anything less than commiting murder etc etc?

“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!”

Lol. Did he ****ing really? What a giant stupid **** bag.

No, we can and do extend that courtesy to Muslims. But we can also simply look at polls and see which religions have more followers who are currently tolerant of homosexuality than others, and therefore which religions have progressed/reformed better than others. I don't understand what the problem is with trusting legitimate polls that ask such simple questions.

We can also not fool ourselves and recognize the role the religion itself plays in fostering hatred toward homosexuality. I mean, when scripture tells Christians butseks is literally a sin and God destroyed an entire city to punish people for it, it's probably fair to say that religion is not tolerant of homosexuality. So let's continue to encourage it's followers to reinterpret, or if not possible, simply ignore such scripture. Or they can even choose to just "see the light" and stop being Christians/Muslims if they want to stop the cognitive dissonance headaches. That is, assuming they won't be killed for it.

Sometimes in conversations like this I find myself sliding farther and farther into obnoxious hard core atheist territory. I mean, should we really in this day and age be excusing grown ass adults for continuing to believe in pure fantasy, and simply keep rewriting their story to fit reality in order to avoid having to deal with the unknown and death and all that?

You are really downplaying the role that indoctrination has in religious belief. There is a reason that every religion has it at its core. It's very very tough to break. Should we excuse people who believe in religions for the ****ty views their religion taught them? Yes, partly. Regardless of age, once indoctrinated, it isn't something that is just easily broken from, even when presented with correct logic.

So what's the solution to the religion problem? Education, logic, and money. There is a reason some of the most prosperous countries are the least religious. Wil is a dumb ****, so he will correlate in the opposite direction saying that places are more prosperous because they are less religious, even though it's very obvious that as prosperity rises, religiosity falls. How do we help the Muslim world in escaping a religion that teaches ****ty things? Help make them prosperous.

Particularly education and money for the women. I see the problems as far more political but it's the same solutions anyway. We have to add stability and perhaps most importantly empowerment - no peoples want to be 2nd class either in their own countries or in the world order.

There's no chicken or egg here. They are mutually reinforcing

To play devil's advocate here, the Saudis were practically given a never-ending fountain of free money and all that happened was they exported their ****ty ideology throughout the world.

The Saudi Shieks have that money. How much do you think has actually been funneled to the people?

You must of missed the poll i posted. US Muslims are more tolerant then many US Christians when it comes to homosexuality.

In before we talk in generalizations about Muslims form somewhere else.

One of the things I find interesting is that conversations that ostensibly begin with questions about security and political policy in response to Islamic radicalism always end up as generalized evaluations of Islam as a religion.

There's nothing wrong with expressing a generally negative opinion about Islam as a religion, but in this context it always seems besides the point. That is, uually the argument, from the beginning, is about whether recognition of the generally negative features of the religion justifies treating all or most Muslims as presumed terrorists or otherwise criminal. If I argue that the answer to that question is no, it doesn't entail denying that the generally negative features exist.