I know a ****load of theology scholars (also Christians) who disagree with that. It's the majority of them, actually.

I've never seen anything that laid out what still counted from the Old Testament and what was now bogus. I don't think there's really a definitive interpretation that combines the New and Old Testaments in a way that isn't stupid.

I think the golden rule undoes most of the Old Testament.

I think that's bull****.

Copied/pasted from here:

Unfortunately, that "new commandment" seems to come with a lot of extraneous baggage.

Well of course, but that's the line of reasoning that many Christians use when ignoring the old testament.

But is there a legit dividing line between the old and new testament, cause otherwise it all just sounds like a mish mash of nonsense.

Jebus>archaic law disguised as religious texts

Pretty sure that's the line.

And is there anything that makes Islam better?

They have Sufis, who have some seriously amazing art and culture, but that's about it.

And Christianity doesn't? I'm sorry, but while Islam in the Renaissance gave us some great ****, it's otherwise just as much garbage as any other major religion. I understand the desire to desire to defend muslims, but their religion doesn't sound any less garbage than anyone else's, and everyone's religion is basically garbage.

mad ting

****you, sober boy

Christianity does not have Sufis, no.

Isn't that just a very obvious technicality?

Yes, but I'd go as far as to say that they don't have a Sufi equivalent that's large enough to matter as well.

Also note that I'm just answering your questions, not fulfilling my desire to desire to defend Islam.

And unfortunately I don't care enough to pursue this. Damn beer.

Sufis rule.

Now I get at least part of the reason you don't like Hitchens.

Religions are as responsible for good stuff and bad stuff just like people. I am :confused: by your broad absolute statement.

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.

Absolutely correct. It doesn't matter if the number of practicing Muslims who follow Wahhabism are 95% worldwide or .0001% - they still genuinely believe they're following Mohammad's ideals and doing what he would have wanted. Which in this case is conquest (Spain being a territory they wish to reclaim). They're a minority among minorities, but their actions are destructive enough that it creates a huge net effect in how people perceive Islam both culturally and idealogically everywhere else.

This isn't an issue of news coverage or not: the vast majority of the world's terrorism is being committed by people indoctrinated in Wahhabism or some variation of it. You also have the rapes and violence propagated by Syrian (or otherwise) "refugees" in Germany and Sweden. Those governments are not helping these people like they should, and it's adding fuel to the fire.

Religion in general is bullshit, but it seems silly to equivocate the craziest fringes of right-wing Christianity with Wahhabism...because even the Westboro Baptist nutjobs aren't crazy enough to go mow down hundreds of people at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris of all places.

But they don't have the same religion. Any more than a Sunni has the same religion as a Wahhabist. Obviously there are a million things that go into a person's identity, but to claim that religion isn't one of them, and by declaring it to be "last place" you are essentially saying that, is ignorant. I don't compare someone like Gayboy from Lebanon to a Wahhabist from Saudi Arabia, not just because of religion, but without Wahhabism I don't imagine that person would fly a plane into a building. Flying a plane into a building is a pretty ****ing illogical thing for someone, no matter their background, to do.

As an atheist I see religion as just another ideology, but one with an often extreme foundation of compliance with the given dogma, and imperial Japan most definitely had an extreme foundation of compliance to rival any religion. And given the belief in the Japanese emperor as divine I'd question whether it wasn't in some ways an actual religion, but honestly that's just conjecture.

You're grasping at straws, bro.

This is functionally the same thing as them having a different religion.

Isn't "everything" we observe around us culturally only there because of historical reasons? Nothing materialized out of thin air overnight.

Saudi Arabia has plenty of money and power, but their society is only as rigidly structured as it is because of how they interpret Islam. If they were a modern Christian nation nobody would be getting thrown off buildings. Period. The instability you mention is a byproduct of their particular ideology.

Yeah, no one has ever been thrown off a building in a Christian nation. Amazing argument.

I've been missing some deep, deep conversation these past few hours. I still equate an extremist from any religion as equal to any other religious extremist.

You missed the point. Does the U.S. have some Christian equivalent of Sharia law that's commonplace? Come on now, you can do better than that.

Did I say it did?

I'll ask this another way. Is getting thrown off a roof for being gay a systemic problem in U.S. culture?

Nope. But that's a markedly different statement than, "If they were a modern Christian nation nobody would be getting thrown off buildings. Period."