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Islam: Is it inherently Evil?

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Which benefits are you talking about?

I would be happy for religion to not receive benefits to begin with.

Tink said:
I have already told you, that our Christian heritage is not a religion.
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So you don't have a religion? I thought you said you were catholic?

I asked do you have a religion? and do you care if it's true?

Pretty straight forward questions, not sure why you always dodge it.
 
Tink said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist–Leninist_atheism
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Your link is not describing atheism, which is just being unconvinced a god exists.

Your link is describing Marxist-leninist Athethism, which is a belief system involving all sorts of political doctrines and ideas that have nothing to do with simple atheism, and a whole lot to do with the first to words e.g. Marxist-leninist.

If a marxist killed some one, it wouldn't be because of atheism, it would be because of the baggage that came with the marxist label.

there is absolutely no way simply being unconvinced a god exists can lead some one to commit violence, they need some other belief to do that.

If you disagree, feel free to provide a specific example of a person that killed some one simply because the were not convinced a god existed.

 
SirRumpole said:
Tax exempt status, government assistance for religious schools to name a couple.
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They would say those benefits are not religious benefits, but are for all "non profit" organisations, e.g. secular organisations get the same benefits.

But, I have long said that the religions receive government funding for their schools, and the "non profit" claims should be examined, because some churches make a lot of money that never gets used for charity.
 
Ves said:
What baggage is that?
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All the rest of their political, social, economic views etc that inform their decisions and actions.

the point I am trying to make is, that simply being unconvinced a god exists can not by itself lead you to a decision that you need to attack some one. You would have to add a whole bunch of other opinions to that before the decision could be made, which means its not the atheism that lead to the decision, it was the other views.

However, believing that a certain god exists and certain religious texts are that gods word, can lead you to make a decision to hurt some one.

I also happy to say the belief in a god by itself with no other doctrines is probably almost as harmless as atheism, but when you ad a religion to that belief, then that baggage can cause bad effects.
 
Value Collector said:
I also happy to say the belief in a god by itself with no other doctrines is probably almost as harmless as atheism, but when you ad a religion to that belief, then that baggage can cause bad effects.
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I'm happy to agree with that which is why I think religions should be required to moderate their bad effects or lose their protected status.
 
Value Collector said:
However, believing that a certain god exists and certain religious texts are that gods word, can lead you to make a decision to hurt some one.
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What I find interesting about this line of thinking is that not everyone who is exposed to those same religious texts or holds those beliefs commits a murder. Actually very very few of them ever do.

So it appears that the texts or beliefs of themselves alone don't make a murder, but there are other causes. Which leaves open the possibility that the beliefs or texts have absolutely no impact.

I follow your line of thinking re Atheism and murder, but it seems a little disingenuous to suggest something completely different when it comes to Religion or another ideology.
 
Ves said:
What I find interesting about this line of thinking is that not everyone who is exposed to those same religious texts or holds those beliefs is a murder.

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Firstly not all Jews, Christians or Muslims even read the bad bits, so are unaware of them, or if they are aware they interpret them differently, or even if they believe them 100% they still might lack the guts to carry out an attack.

For example, A lot of Australians would agree with the counter leadership raids the Australian Army carried out over 10 years in Afghanistan, however very few would be brave enough to carry out the raid.

Ves said:
Which leaves open the possibility that the beliefs or texts have absolutely no impact.
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Beliefs inform actions, and if you believe that certain things are moral and the right thing to do, you will be able to carry acts of extreme violence, and feel very good about it.
 
Ves said:
I follow your line of thinking re Atheism and murder, but it seems a little disingenuous to suggest something completely different when it comes to Religion or another ideology.
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Religion is different to atheism because it has a whole range of teachings and doctrines that give people instructions, and it has a way of altering what a person perceives as moral behaviour.

not only that it has a whole punishment and reward system, threatening people with hell and rewarding them with heaven.
 
Value Collector said:
Firstly not all Jews, Christians or Muslims even read the bad bits, so are unaware of them, or if they are aware they interpret them differently, or even if they believe them 100% they still might lack the guts to carry out an attack.
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So basically you agree, the beliefs or texts don't of themselves make a murderer, but it has more to do the underlying person (how they interpret something or whether they want to or are able to perform an action etc).

Beliefs inform actions, and if you believe that certain things are moral and the right thing to do, you will be able to carry acts of extreme violence, and feel very good about it.
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But what informs beliefs? Why do certain people do things and others don't?

I think this a very interesting subject. From the mid to late 19th century there was a lot of progress made in this area. Prior to this point there was basically no recognition that some parts of the human mind were unconscious in nature (ie. the processes occur without us being aware and we cannot reflect on them via introspection, repressed trauma).

Lots of discussion on this in modern psychology and the field of psychoanalysis.

If you're interested in following this up further from a philosophical stand points then some more historical influences to look at are Nietzsche's work on the Genealogy of Morals, Freud (and Lacan if you want more), Marx's false consciousness / alienation / commodity fetishism for starters.

There's absolutely heaps of this stuff in all different humanities fields that goes a lot further than "well this guy read a text and it told him to murder all non-believers so he did."
 
Ves said:
So it appears that the texts or beliefs of themselves alone don't make a murder, but there are other causes. Which leaves open the possibility that the beliefs or texts have absolutely no impact.
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I couldn't agree with that. Those Islamic extremists that have carried out atrocious murders and other acts of violence have justified their actions by quoting from the Quran and Hadith which explicitly urges them to do such acts. Those texts are the only truth as far as they are concerned and their followers are usually dissuaded or even forbidden from consuming any other information source other than that approved by their spiritual leaders.

The Muslims that ignore the violence in those texts typically have other moderating influences (their culture, access to a broad spectrum of literature etc.) that allow them to see the texts as a historical record rather than a prescription to be followed. However, a large percentage of moderates unfortunately (based on PEW research) have a tendency to support state sanctioned violence that follows Islamic teachings even if they themselves wouldn't carry out such acts (death to apostates and homosexuals for example)
 
Ves said:
But what informs beliefs? Why do certain people do things and others don't?
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Some people are just psychotic to start with, and then they read a certain bit of ideology and use it to justify or reinforce their pre existing beliefs.

I think that people who are radicalised to commit crimes should be treated as mentally ill and kept locked up until they can prove it's safe to let them out.
 

All of those things you mention are acts of themselves, and separate from the underlying psychological causes.

Religion or ideology or whatever, these kinds of people generally find a way to satisfy their deepest urges.

Take all of these things away and you've still got two cavemen hitting each other with clubs, I'll guarantee.
 

They don't have to be psychotic, you can convince rational, good honest people to go and commit acts of extreme violence if you can convince them it's the right thing to do.

Our defence forces rely on having a large number of honest men ready to carry out acts of extreme violence, they aren't psychopaths, they are just everyday Aussies, wanting to do good.

Now if you add a religion into the mix you can tap into this same desire to do good, but the religion can warp what is considered good. Killing unbelievers in the eyes of a religious extremist can be justified in the same way a SAS soldier justifies raiding a taliban leaders house and killing him and his body guards, or justified in the same way as the bombers that dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan.
 

But then we would expect to have similar levels of severe violent acts in secular societies which demonstrably isn't the case. There is a strong correlation between the rate of serious acts of violence and religiosity. Countries with the lowest crime rates tend to be the most secular (Scandinavian countries etc.)
 

A good reason to keep religion to a minimum.

However we still get people like Martyn Bryant, Julian Knight or Anders Breivik who don't seem motivated by religion, just an inferiority complex and they committed their crimes to get attention. Those sort are probably the most dangerous as it's harder to see them coming, and unfortunately there is little that can be done untill after the event.
 
So Ves, are you saying you don't think religious teachings can alter what a person considers right and wrong?
 
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