PkrBum wrote:Your faith has been ridiculed and demeaned... and as far as I know you've never taken a child bride, beaten your wife, honor killed a daughter, stoned a woman, cut off a thiefs hand, beheaded an infidel, crucified an enemy... etc.
There's no comparison... there's rationalizing the difference between your faith and the mullahs and terrorist factions.
One is largely good... the other largely bad. You can call for modernity all you want... but that doesn't change reality.
Both religions themselves are "largely bad". Here again, those who wield one religion live in a much less sophisticated society with a much less sophisticated economy with a much less sophisticated education system that all exist under an iron grip theocracy. Those who wield the other religion have since been beaten back by modernity, they live in a much more sophisticated society with a much more sophisticated economy with a much more sophisticated education system, and all of which exist under a secular government that is steadily reducing any religious influence (see recent gay marriage decision). When the conditions for the latter religion mirrored those of the former religion, the latter religion was just as violent, just as oppressive, just as barbaric, and wrought just as much terror to society. And you don't have to take my word for this. Open a history book.
Perhaps a formula would help you understand this. I doubt it, but perhaps. Lets say that we define the following variables.
V = the degree of religious motivated violence and oppression
G = the degree to which religion is intertwined with government
M = the degree to which a society is deemed 'modern'
K = GDP per capita
E = the average educational attainment
C = a constant term
x = coefficient values determined by data sets
Given the above...
V = C + Gx - Mx - Kx - Ex
Meaning, the degree to which religious violence manifests in a society is a function of 1) the degree to which religion influences government, 2) the degree to which a society is modern, 3) GDP per capita, and 4) average educational attainment.
G is positive since violence will obviously increase as the degree to which religion is intertwined with government increases. M, K, and E are all negative because we should expect those variables to be inversely correlated with the degree of religious violence.
But the underlying religion itself is not a factor there. It doesn't matter. Why? They're all barbaric. They're all oppressive. They're all mutually exclusive. They're all ancient relics from an incredibly violent, ignorant, immoral, and miserable past. A delusional person who believes he is doing the deeds of a mythological being named allah is just as dangerous as a delusional person who believes he is doing the deeds of a mythological being named yahweh. The factors that aggravate or mitigate that level of danger are in part the variables that I listed above.
If I had good data from around the world for the above data points, I suspect that the above model would show us that all of the variables mentioned do exhibit a statistically significant correlation with religious violence. And I suspect all of the signs would be just as I have laid them out.
Many years from now, this type of data will likely be freely available, and others in the future will be able to make the case that I am making here but with the actual numbers to irrefutable show these correlations do in fact exist and do in fact exhibit an influence on the degree to which religious violence manifests. And in spite of that, there will still be useful idiots who aren't able to offer any sort of substantive rebuttal, though they will still continue to disagree and they still won't be able to coherently explain why it is that they disagree. There will still be useful idiots who look at that and say "Why don you just admit that you're a shill for islam, huh!??! Huh?!?! Why can't you show me where you...yadda yadda yadda".
There is no cure for stupid.
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