Have you thought about the idea that the extremism might be the result of certain conditions and leverages religion rather than be the cause of it? There are plenty of Islamic countries without extremists, and plenty of extremists that have nothing to do with Islam. Right now, today, there might coincidentally be a high correlation between the conditions that lead to extremism in the region of the world that tends to be Islamic.
Catholics and Protestants did some horrible things in Northern Ireland. Some right wing Christian groups seem to be festering the idea of doing bad things here in the US on an increasing basis. Religion seems to be a part of extremism, but no religion really seems to have any real claim to being peaceful.
Nobody’s killing someone else and claiming it’s because of their atheist beliefs. Seems like that’s a pretty good baseline to suggest adding in religion creates the extremists.
It seems like quite a few people get killed for political or financial reasons as well. See for example Vietnam, Mexico, Columbia, China, etc.
It’s interesting to see how are views of repressed groups fighting back against their oppressors has changed as it’s become easier and easier to hear directly from individuals in the group that’s being repressed. Many things become a lot less clearcut when you get to hear multiple sides of a story.
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone assert otherwise. I do hear the assertion that if only they followed Jesus they wouldn’t have done [bad thing] for any number of values of bad things.
And after watching all the crap that STBX pulled while claiming to be a Christian… it’s a load of bunk. He’s lied, stolen, cheated, been mildly violent… but according to him I’m the one who’s a bad Christian because I didn’t respect him as the head of the family. (Examples of my disrespect would be the aforementioned example of finishing the potato chips while he was on a long-ish work trip or failing to come home from the store with an item he’d requested… even though the store was out of said item, or taking too long at the store.)
You’ve never heard the christian refrain about how athiests might as well be robbing banks and murdering and raping people because there’s no accountability? Because that’s out there.Turns out it’s not true though.
I’d argue there are a lot of people, e.g. drug cartels who may or may not be religious, but kill for areligious reasons. Of course, their atheism doesn’t encourage them toward killing.
It seems that a primary root cause of religious terrorism is poverty and other poor conditions like starvation and being subject to war. Religion is a possible point of terroristic nucleation just like gangs are. We’ve seen more Islamic terrorism over recent decades than from other religions. Muslims are disproportionately from poor and war-torn countries.
In the past there has been plenty of Christian and Jewish violence. In modern history, Christians are more likely to be in places like North America and Europe, which are relatively wealthy and stable.
There is less incentive to radically change the system when the system is comfortable and safe.
Maybe, but I’ve heard Christian’s make the argument that Atheists are evil because they are Atheists and that they have no moral system to keep them from doing bad things.
Now granted they may feel the same about all non-Christians not of their particular domination but that’s not quite relevant to my first PP.
Again… nuanced difference… it’s not that the atheism is CAUSING the bad behavior… it’s that the Christianity (or other faith if they acknowledge that other faiths have semi-decent moral codes) is NOT preventing it.
Subtle distinction. Not all atheists are immoral… some are just naturally decent people. But without the religious ethics more of them are likely to fall into immoral behavior… I think that’s the line of thinking.
Well, I’ll give you that. but instances aren’t the same as mass atrocities justified by religion that are still going on today.One’s an outlier. The other’s a feature.
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