Reply to What does it mean that ISIS "beheads" its victims?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]all this ranting and pseudo-intellectual babble...the quotation and interpretation of any religious scripture is meaningless. take a look at what is actually happening around the world and who is involved.[/quote]

This is not bad strategy. I would only stress the importance of accuracy when describing "who is involved."  One could argue quite accurately that humans are involved in what is "actually happening." Similarly, it would be correct to say that what "is actually happening" exclusively involves mammals. However, being more specific can increase understanding. Many will lazily turn to "Arab" or "Muslim" as adjectives. However, those groups are so broad and heterogeneous as to be only marginally better than "human" and "mammal."  Because such laziness stretches to most of our media, the average person may be ill-equipped to be more specific. However, that is a problem that needs to be addressed rather than an excuse to continue being misleading.
[/quote]

It really is sad and pathetic how liberals such as yourself use variation in the individuals who identify themselves as Muslims to ignore the things that Islam painly says and the effect those things have on people's behavior. Here is an article written with people like you in mind:

https://richarddawkins.net/2014/10/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself/

[quote]The most controversial thing I said was: “We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” This statement has been met with countless charges of “bigotry” and “racism” online and in the media. But imagine that the year is 1970, and I said: “Communism is the Mother lode of bad ideas.” How reasonable would it be to attack me as a “racist” or as someone who harbors an irrational hatred of Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, etc. This is precisely the situation I am in. My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences—but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people.[/quote]

[quote]On the basis of their life experiences, they believe that the success of a group like ISIS, despite its ability to recruit people by the thousands from free societies, says nothing about the role that Islamic doctrines play in inspiring global jihad. Rather, they imagine that ISIS is functioning like a bug light for psychopaths—attracting “disaffected young men” who would do terrible things to someone, somewhere, in any case. For some strange reason these disturbed individuals can’t resist an invitation to travel to a foreign desert for the privilege of decapitating journalists and aid workers. I await an entry in the DSM-VI that describes this troubling condition.

Contrary to what many liberals believe, those bad boys who are getting off the bus in Syria at this moment to join ISIS are not all psychopaths, nor are they simply depressed people who have gone to the desert to die. Most of them are profoundly motivated by their beliefs. Many surely feel like spiritual James Bonds, fighting a cosmic war against evil. After all, they are spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth—or they will die trying, and be martyred, and then spend eternity in Paradise. Secular liberals seem unable to grasp how psychologically rewarding this worldview must be. [/quote]

[quote]Whatever the prospects are for moving Islam out of the Middle Ages, hope lies not with obscurantists like Reza Aslan but with reformers like Maajid Nawaz. The litmus test for intellectual honesty on this point—which so many liberals fail—is to admit that one can draw a straight line from specific doctrines in Islam to the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world. [/quote][/quote]

Uh, did you actually cite Richard Dawkins' expertise on the subject of religion?  Jesus just went poof.[/quote]

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