When you're as odd as he is just walking in the room takes courage

Bat that isn't a dis

I mean that with mad respect

Why do you think I'm so abrasive and jokey? You need a buffer between you and the world when social situations are such a confusing minefield.

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So let me get this straight, it's only actually evil if people are killed?

On the list of bad guys, yes, ISIS is empirically worse than WBC. Why? Because they murder people for religious and political reasons. Why doesn't WBC murder people? Lack of public support; a vanishingly small percentage of people agree with their rhetoric; strong federal, state, and local law enforcement; and, and I'm not discounting its importance, a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is less intrinsically violent.

It's not "the truth vs what you wish was the truth". It's 'why is it true and are those conditions the same across countries'. Actions don't happen in a vacuum. Rhetoric is a reflection of the society in which it's developed. How is it different to suppose that if the WBC was based in Syria that they would not behave the same as ISIS? Hasn't stopped any of you from ascribing the dark motives of fringe groups in those countries to all Muslims in the West.

None of you have answered the question on "what to do" regarding Islam in the West. But please, continue to think 1.5 billion people are bloodthirsty monsters. You're totally not contributing the the climate of fear and mistrust that breeds even more violence.

How do you survive the holidays? I imagine "Merry Christmas" triggers PTSD or something in you.

Sadly, nobody's listening. They don't seem to think standing at some poor soldier's grave as close to his grieving family as you can and exulting over his death, and praying for more, is evil for some reason. Go figure. :banghead: Guess it might be different if it happened to be someone they knew.
He probably shoots them in the face. Isn't it all "Happy Holidays" now anyway?

I don't say happy holidays or merry christmas or goodbye even. That's too fake for me. Most of the time I opt for "you're going to die alone and your other fears will probably come true too" as a send off.

Prejudice is a terrible thing, because it means that you can't say sensible things against a religion without unintentionally taking sides in a cultural war represented mostly by *******s. Islam is garbage for many reasons, such as it being nonsense just like any religion, not to mention that pretty much any religion also codifies backwards beliefs from centuries or millennia ago. I'd kill all the Republicans if it meant I could **** on a religion that deserves to be **** on as much as any other.

Thank God you don't have kids! Imagine telling them that every time you see them off at school!
Imagine .... a world without organised religion!
http://i.imgur.com/ywOpPB7.gif

I'm with you. I find Islam morally repugnant. Even more so than Christianity. At its core, Christianity preaches that to love God is to serve God. There's a bunch of other stuff too, but Jesus gave two commandments and, at least the second one, is an ethically admirable thing, if impossible (love thy neighbor as yourself). At its core is love, or at least, the Christian conception of that. They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as love.

Islam, at its core, preaches obedience to the word of God/Allah. It's a religion built on submission to divinity, and through submission one finds peace (the concept of inshallah). They'd answer the question proposed by The Prince as fear.

I'm totally in agreement with most people here that Islam is, from a humanist perspective, the more objectionable faith. THANK GOD/ALLAH/SCIENCE that the overwhelming, truly gigantic, brobdingnagian (there's an SAT word for ya), majority of practitioners DON'T follow the words as written. They take the parts that work for them and skip or ignore the rest. LIKE EVERY OTHER BELIEF SYSTEM.

Hell, humanism has some objectionable elements. I was turned on to the writing of Michel Foucault a couple months ago when a similar topic was raised in my friend group - he put forth the notion that a universal definition of 'human' or 'human nature' or 'human morality' necessarily will exclude some elements of humanity and can therefore provide a justification for war, prejudice, etc. if certain groups don't comport with our established definitions.

It's sad that we don't extend the complexity of human experience much further than ourselves or our 'tribe'.