Bigoted things are different than religious things. They will say "I believe in the literal truth of the bible" because they are supposed to say that. The way they live their lives show that they don't really believe it.

But, I do think that a lot of the Christian Right in America is still saying (and believing to some extent) things they think they are supposed to say because all the people around them are saying it. As far as politics to though, it didn't use to be like that. The Conservative Christian Right was something that was skillfully manufactured and they managed to turn a lot of American Christians into basically anti-Christians. This is definitely not what Jesus would do.

To Fly,

This was my answer to your question. The cause is the ideology of identity politics, and if you don't whole-heartedly support the cause, even if paradoxically you are a member of a vulnerable group that the ideology is supposed to be standing up for, you are the enemy.

That is how ideology works on the right and the left. That is why Dave Rubin (who is gay) is an enemy of the left and Bill Clinton (who is a white, heterosexual WASP) is the enemy of the right.

It’s not my fault that it’s still there to look at.

Calculate all the imaginary scary polled people you want, I can’t stop you. It’s not going to make the stereotypes that rely on such fearful preconceived notions any less than what they are. You have to deride me to support your denial? Classic.

So what next? Now that you have calculated about them, what’s next? They seem numerous and scary after figuring how many people exactly are 1% of Muslims, according to you.

So, it is not possible to have an informed opinion of a religious belief system and believe that system has too many bad ideas and this is a problem?

I don't actually know Maher's case that well, but that is basically Sam Harris's argument that he has been accused of Islamophobia for.

No one claimed that there's no such thing as tribalism. You just think it explains everything from everyone, I guess other than you. You're not that special.

For a religion with as many adherents as Islam, and with as much diversity of viewpoints within the religion as you see among Muslims, probably not.

In other words, I agree with Willd.

I mean, I appreciate your honesty; but from the outside looking in it is kinda crazy the mental gymnastics one has to go through to argue that disagreeing with an idea makes one bigoted by default if too many people believe it is true as a matter of faith.

Good grief, religious belief systems are a huge quantity of information. Reduction to faults is dehumanization.

Yeah the framework of fault-finding for effect is risky and not at all as straight forward as it may be reduced to propose.

lol, he’s a Libertarian, try again.

I mean, I am paraphrasing but I think Sam Harris would agree this is a big problem; that we can't argue an idea based on its merits. We have to take a poll first to make sure not too many people will become outraged, and if it is above some tipping point we have to accuse someone of bigotry to silence them.

What? Buddhists don't believe that Jesus was the son of an all-powerful God, which millions of people take as a matter of faith.

But no one argues that Buddhists are universally bigoted against Christians.

Depends on the religion, how you phrase the criticism and what you do with it.

I'd probably be pretty silly if I went to a fluffy "Jesus loves everyone" new-age Christian who carried a banner in a pride parade and started chastising him for the actions of Westboro Baptist Church.

But I'd be within bounds (in my eyes at least) if I question Christianity as a moral compass in the light of how organizations of Westboro Baptist Church gets to use it to spread hate.

I personally do not think it is controversial to state that Islam has a huge problem with extremism. But consider that the majority of victims of this extremism are other Muslims, and you might start to realize that not only is it wrong to apply this criticism to individuals indiscriminately, it is probably even pretty damn stupid and you risk making the problem even worse. Point the finger where it should be pointed and you might make quite a few useful friends and allies along the way.

Right now a lot of Muslim kids and teenagers are seeing that they'll be hated by a lot of people regardless of what they do. It won't create a huge impact, most people are peaceful through life, but it'll certainly make actual Islamic extremism just that tiny tad easier to spread.

I think the point might be that it is fine to criticize Islam, Christianity, Buddhism--but because these are big tents you have to be nuanced in your criticism.

I don't know how familiar you are with Sam Harris, but his basic argument (I am paraphrasing) is that one can quote literal lines of Islamic religious scripture, illustrate how extremist positions (such as death penalty for apostasy) are very reasonable (if not verbatim) interpretations of that scripture, and argue this is a big problem that is fueling a lot of the tension between East and West.

And he is branded an Islamophobe for this.

If you do it in a way that is implicitly critical of anyone who follows that belief system, even if they don't all actually believe what you think they do, then yes that's a problem. It's akin to saying Christianity is an ignorant and bigoted religion because conservative Christians believe in creationism and are homophobic. Obviously the numbers around the world are vastly different but within the US Muslims are more liberal than Christians but far more likely to be victims of discrimination, in large part due to the broad brush portrayal of Islam.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Don’t you think this is something you ought to look into? You cane in here to have a sad because liberals said mean things about Maher but you didn’t even check to see what they said about Mahr or why?

MEGASPOILERS: liberals aren’t agains him because he opposes forged marriages or child brides. You made up that part.

Probably because you can find similarly extreme positions in almost any religious text that is more than 1000 years old.

At this point, it's pretty clear that his sad about liberal criticisms of Bill Maher was really just a proxy for his sad about liberal criticisms of Sam Harris.

So it would be Christianophobia to be critical of Genesis because it is the justification many conservative Christians use to support their concept of creationism?

It doesn't sound like you are very aware of Harris. He has expanded his brand, but his original whole shtick is that most of the old religions are bad ideas. He has written books about it. He has really only received pushback for his criticism of Islam though, for obvious political reasons.

Why are liberals against Maher?

Yeah, I agree with Sam Harris that we should argue ideas on their merits, which is why I dislike the method of argumentation you primarily use towards progressives of speculating about the motives for their beliefs.

Creationism probably wasn't the best example to use because it doesn't obviously harm anyone to hold that belief. However if you said that Christianity as a whole is dangerous because the Old Testament supports the death penalty for adultery and because whole cities were wiped out because they committed sodomy then yes that would be Christianophobia.

Most religions have some bonkers stuff in their religious texts and fundamentalists of any of them could potentially cause harm. However painting a whole religion as being fundamentalist does nobody any favours and is itself actively harmful to a lot of people.

What are you even talking about?

These are not imaginary polls, and you cannot disregard the data because it hurts your feelings. Please cite when I have used a stereotype relying on fearful preconceived notions. Good faith or don't bother.

You don’t have a good argument guessing about feelings.

What does it tell if your poll is treated like an unquestionable authority for your opinion ?

After calculating about how many scary Muslims there might be?