But it's still a religion based on nonsense, like all religions. And that nonsense has very real cultural implications that are not good. I understand defending Muslims in the face of Muslim hating Western douchebags, but that doesn't make what Islam has done in general any better. It's still an ideology based on the same hatred of other tribes as any other religion based on hating tribes, which is pretty much all religions. Basically I don't support defending laughable bull****, which is what religion ultimately is.

That's retarded. No book has ever done anything to anyone since it's made of non-sentient paper, but the people who read those books torture others with hot pokers in the eye. Separating a book from its readers makes no sense, and separating a religion from the people who read the books associated with that religion is likewise nonsense, cause those people ARE the religion.

It's really not. Or at least the history of a large enough group of people and their book (Christians, Muslims, etc) is largely the history of that book.

And religions are ideologies. What's your point? That ideologies are garbage, including Islam? Including Wahhabism, Sunnism, Shiah, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc? I agree, despite the potential benefits of these ideologies they are all garbage, or at least have garbage beliefs.

Duh. Ridding the world of religion would only rid the world of an excuse for people to torture and murder each other. But it's still one less excuse.

What's separate religions and ideologies?

wut? Please answer the question cause I don't even know what your "answer" means. What separates a religion from an ideology? Keep in mind that your answer will necessarily require more than a snarky sentence or two.

If I understand your argument correctly it sounds like you're using it, not Batlord... No "true christian" would act unchristlike.

Every atheist on the internet knows what that is. Please apply that in an argument. Cause I assure you, you are not being plain.

I'm just gonna assume you're saying that there's bad **** in the Bible too (cause you sound like you're trying to debate on acid, please clean up your attempts at arguing) and I've been saying this whole time that I don't ****ing like any religions. I'm not arguing the position that Islam is terrible and Christianity is the bomb. I think that all religions are based on nonsense, and most if not all of them are very susceptible to violence. Islam is not immune from that just because so many Republicans are prejudiced *******s. Cultural conservatism's intolerance of non-Christian religions is a non-sequitur regarding Islam's ****tiness or non-****tiness.

Except that tennis shoes do not have dogma, either scriptural or cultural, that guides the actions of their wearers. I'm honestly not sure how to proceed from here because we're just talking about really basic ****. The shoes you wear do not affect how you see the world. The god you worship can and often does. No pair of Nikes has ever inspired or even been used as a spurious justification for an atrocity. Religion and Islam have. I think you've oversimplified your argument to the point that you don't even have one.

I'm not even arguing that Islam is this great evil compared to other ideologies and religions, I simply think it's dumb to dismiss it as irrelevant as so many people try to do. It's an incredibly powerful force in the lives of millions of people, many of whom use it as a pretext for violence, and whether the specific words of the Quran have caused this violence is in fact irrelevant, because these people have still derived meaning from the texts of Islam that has at the very least justified their actions in their own minds.

Whatever the specifics of the relationship between Islam and Islamic terrorists, to pretend that there is no problem in modern Islam in any way is retarded.