Any time someone tells you their Christian god is pro life and loves children, remind them of 2 Kings 2:23-25 when god tears 42 children to bits with bears just for teasing a bald man,
“ 23 He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” 24 And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. 25 From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.”

Then have them read psalm 137.9…
“ Blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock: the children represent the future generations, and so must be destroyed if the enemy is truly to be eradicated.”

Then remind them that god killed every Egyptian baby out of spite against one man.

If you believe in the Judeo/Christian god, you must believe god loves to kill babies, he does it constantly, viciously, capriciously, and joyfully. If Christian’s knew their religion they would be 100% pro abortion….but if they knew their religion they wouldn’t be idolaters, disrespectful to their elders, dishonest, greedy, or selfish, they would live by the most important lesson of their religion, the golden rule…but they don’t even know what that is.

😂😂😂😂
I guess you forgot you claimed you don’t watch cable or FOX at all bobby. Another lie you yourself proved false. Such a silly boy.
😂😂😂😂

Pew says only 40% of Republicans and 20% of democrats think homosexuality is “wrong” and should be discouraged, Bob….and that’s people still willing to say they’re republicans, a rapidly shrinking subset.
Gallup says under 30% overall agree with you.
Your claim “most Americans” agree with you is more made up bullshit, and I think you know it.
Not even most republicans do.
You are consistently on the wrong and unpopular (not always the same thing) side of every issue.

His category? Is there another non funny far right “comedian” that doesn’t make jokes, only vitriolic attacks bigots laugh at on tv? Not that I know of…it’s easy to be the highest rated far right “comedian” when you’re the only one. As the only hyper bigoted right wing late night talk show contrasting with at least 6 self competing talk shows (that don’t compete with him because they’re comedy shows, not a far right whine and bitch fest), if he didn’t have the “highest ratings” it would be disastrous. Bigots like to watch and be bigoted with other bigots. If you combine centrist (what you call leftist) talk shows ratings, he’s a sad little blip. He’s the only choice for the right, the right that’s so divorced from sanity they think hating homosexuals isn’t bigotry because they say homosexuality is wrong.
“But…he beat The Daily Show”….only after Trevor Noah retired and they have no host. Try again.

Higher ratings do not in any way contradict my statement, bob. He’s still a cold pile of shit you love to shovel into your empty head.

No hate!?! So, you’ve never watched him at all, not once for one second, because I have and he’s 100% hate. His “jokes” are nothing but snide insults. He’s never made a joke.

Have you ever mowed on Saturday, or had your kids mow? Ever eat shellfish? Ever wear a cotton poly blend? All 3 are just as sinful as homosexuality, and call for the same punishments. How much do you protest red lobster bob? How many times have you ransacked a tjmaxx? How often have you stoned your children to death for working on Saturday, the sabbath the commandments demand you remember and keep sacred (not Sunday, that’s the Christian sabbath, and there were no Christians when the 10 commandments were given).

No hate, he just hates gays….and blacks, immigrants, atheists, young people, Muslims, liberals, centrists, reporters, working women, truth, honesty, reality, etc….but no hate. 😂
He’s nothing but hate, xenophobic fear driven hate by insecure ignorami for insecure ignorami. He’s definitely your guy.

“Sinner side”. 😂 There it is. It’s about your bigoted interpretation of religious dogma that you think should be law, Christian sharia law. You have no clue what kind of backwards murderous Stone Age civilization that begets, do you? Hint, it makes Muslim sharia law look positively enlightened and permissive.
Religious nonsense is always the wrong side, listening to hypocritical zealots that themselves pick and choose what parts of their religion to follow and cudgel others with and what to ignore based on whatever is good for them at the time is the wrong side…or have you picketed schools for allowing blended fabrics or serving pork lunches? Why not, they’re grooming your children to sin. Have you lobbied to ban blended fabrics, shellfish, for a return of and enhancement of blue laws extending to every judeo-christian sabbath and with the biblically prescribed death penalty, just in case, etc? No, because you don’t really believe in the Bible, you only abuse it by trying to force your chosen “beliefs” on others.

Bob, you have never even glimpsed the “right” side, and you live on the wrong side looking away from the correct side while shouting insults behind you. Only you don’t see it. 🤦‍♂️

Jesus… Where do you get your fake statistics? 40 during Trump’s tenure? What asinine nonsense.
Sorry buddy, there were 323 mass shootings (4 or more shot) in 2018 alone. 434 In 2019. 614 in 2000.

Or are you saying Trump was not really president then…or ever?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2020

693 in 2021 under Biden, an increase but massive slowdown in the increase…what cons call a cut when talking about the military budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2021

It’s telling that you never…NEVER cite your sources…obviously because you are embarrassed to say who suckers you into believing nonsense.

Wait…did you just claim GOD gave you your civil rights and constitutional freedoms? Then why do you oppose his long standing decision that abortion was a constitutional …and moral, ethical, God given right?

Edit: Also, the Christian God absolutely undeniably prohibits you from killing others, so what gives you the idea he also gave you the right to carry around instruments of death and use them at the slightest perceived provocation?
You must worship some other god…or do you contradict god’s commandments because you know better? Does your god also give you the right to a secret Ashley Maddison account? To covet and take your neighbor’s property and family? Clearly your god allows you to lie. You probably work on Saturday, the sabbath mentioned in those commandments, don’t you?
Bob, what god are you talking about? It’s not the Judeo/Christian god.

There's no confusion or miscommunication.
They are using the lax rules designed to promote Judeo Christian religions against them to expose religion's hypocrisy and intolerance publicly, much like Pastafarians but with better organization and iconography.
Were they not clear?

Religion isn't the basis for all "Good". Chimps don't have religion yet they show compassion, empathy and cooperation all the time. To say the Judeo-Christian God concept is the reason there is love ignores all the other religions and lost Amazonian tribes that produced "good" all on their own and actually advances the emotional background of racism.

They care.
If it could absolutely not be justified and was instead clearly, strictly forbidden under any circumstance by their chosen religion, most of them would not be involved.

It's actually not a distorted interpretation, it's a literal one. The same can be said for nearly all major religions, certainly for all Judeo-Christian religions (and Islam is one). When interpreted literally, most religions call for murder of infidels and proselytization by force. It's just that most people only give their religion lip service unless it's supporting what they want at the time, at which time they become strictly religious and excuse the inexcusable by claiming their religion requires "X", so it must be tolerated because GAWD.
I say the intolerable must not be tolerated, no matter what the excuse. Society has determined that murder is intolerable. If your organization's written rules call for murder (whether those rules are regularly followed or not), your organization is a violent criminal organization and should be eradicated immediately. That goes for all major religions in the same way it goes for other organized criminal organizations...I simply can't ever understand why we don't act that way as a society.

"The idea that your cat is the Creator of the Universe has no explanatory power. To have an argument that your cat is the Creator you need to provide positive reasons for it. The Universe is finely tuned: if design is an explanation than I wouldn't need to disprove anything and everything as being a potential Creator, I would simply need to examine the evidence for design to make a determination as to what kind of being this must be, and using Occams razor I could come to some definite conclusions about it."

And I would posit that any same test applied to the Judeo-Christian god would fail the test equally (given that "god did it" isn't a theory, it's a construct). For that matter, so would any other god you want to throw out there. Assuming an intelligent creator pre-dating the universe created the universe calls into question "How did this dude himself go about getting created?". That question can only basically be answered with "It's turtles all the way down".

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know my cat didn't create it? Equal empirical evidence (none) of both constructs.

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision? The mere fact of its existence let alone its operation and stability is something too grandiose to be automatically regulated to some accident.

Really? We happen to live in a time period called the Stelliferous Era in which stars exist. Too far in the past, they couldn't form; too far in the future, they will no longer form. So oddly enough, given that the conditions are at this particular time are favorable to life, life came into being and evolved. So if it's your belief that god created this universe to be human friendly, why'd he wait so long for the conditions to be right for us to exist? Why not just do it on Day 1? Or why didn't he wait longer? Why did the universe have to be human-friendly in the first place? He's god -- he can do anything, so why are humans bound to all these rules of math, physics and chemistry, like every single other bit of life from bacteria to Blue whales?

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know it's not my incredibly clever, and possibly deific, cat? Again, same empirical proof (none).

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision?

We live in a time where the universe is able to support life. Outside of this neatly-ordered era, we'd be plasma or neutrons.

Just outta curiosity, why is your creation myth somehow superior all the other creation myths out there? Apparently, and correct me if I'm wrong, your belief is that the Judeo-Christian god created the universe and you base this on the Bible. You embrace this belief, yet discard all other versions of the story of creation. Why is your myth "right" and all others incorrect?

Up until I saw my fellow countrymen (including many I respected) fawning like chimps at a tea party during that whole "jubilee" thing I might have agreed. There seems to be a huge cognitive dissonance for most people when it comes to the royals.

On the one hand most don't really take it very seriously, on the other many (maybe even most) appear to have a sub-conscious desire/need to submit to their natural betters. Our whole national identity is built on the myths of Kings and failed rebellions and I fear for many the Monarchy represents a kind of bizarre political security blanket. We claim to not really care but deep down I think many of us secretly fear loosing our mythical matriarch.

One might liken it to celebrity worship backed by 100's & 1000's of years of religious mythology. The Royal's aren't really human to us, they are more like some closely related parent species born to a life we could only dream of. I realise that when asked directly most people would consciously acknowledge that was silly, but most would also respond the same to say Christian sexual repression. They know sex and nakedness when considered rationally are nothing to be ashamed of, but they still continue to treat their own urges as somehow sinful when they do not fall within rigidly defined social parameters.

We still haven't gotten over such Judeo-Christian self policing because the social structures built up around it are still with us (even if we fool ourselves into thinking we are beyond the reach of such sub-conscious influences). I don't think we will ever get over our master-slave culture while class and unearned privilege are still built into the fabric of our society. Having a Royal family, no matter how symbolic, is the very living embodiment of this kind of backwards ideology.

It's like trying to quit heroin while locked in a room with a big bag of the stuff.

It's true to say most don't take the whole thing very seriously but that to me is almost as concerning. Most people when asked don't believe advertising has a significant effect on their psyche but Coke-a-cola still feels like spending about 3 billion a year on it is worthwhile. One of them is clearly mistaken!

Our royal family here, is to me working in the same way as coke's advertising. It's a focal point for a lot of sub-conscious concepts we are bombarded with our whole lives. Naturally there are many sides to this and it wouldn't work without heavy media manipulation, state indoctrination etc. but it's an intrinsic part of the coercive myth none the less. Monarch's, Emperors and wealthy Dynasties are all poisons to me. No matter the pragmatic details, the sub-conscious effect seems significant and cumulative.

"Dead" symbolisms IMHO can often be the most dangerous. At least one is consciously aware of the devils we see. No one is watching the one's we have forgotten.....

The above is reason enough for me but I have bog all better to do this aft so I'll dive into the rabbithole a bit.....

(We do very quickly start getting into conspiracy theory territory hare so I'll try to keep it as uncontroversial as I can.)

A. The UK is truly ruled by financial elites not political ones IMHO. "The city" says jump, Whitehall says how high. The Royal family being among the wealthiest landowners and investors in the world (let alone UK) presumably can exert the same kind of influence. Naturally this occurs behind closed doors, but when the ownership class puts it's foot down the government ignores them to their extreme detriment. (It's hard to argue with people who own your economy de-facto and can make or break your career)

B. The queen herself sits on the council on foreign relations & Bilderberg group and she was actually the chairwoman of the "committee of 300" for several years. (and that's not even starting on club of Rome, shares in Goldman Sachs etc.)

C. SIS the uk's intelligence services (MI5/6 etc.), which have been proven to on occasion operate without civilian oversight in the past, are sworn to the crown. This is always going to be a most contentious point as it's incredibly difficult to prove wrongdoings, but I have very strong suspicions based on various incidents (David Kelly, James Andanson, Jill Dando etc.), that if they wanted/needed you dead/threatened that would not be especially difficult to arrange.

D. Jimmy Saville. This one really is tin foil hat territory, but it's no secret he was close to the Royal family. I am of the opinion this is because he was a top level procurer of "things", for which I feel there is a great deal of evidence, but I can't expect people to just go along with that idea. However given the latest "paedogeddon" scandal involving a extremely high level abuse ring (cabinet members, mi5/6, bankers etc.) it certainly would come as little surprise to find royal family members involved.

Points A&B I would stand behind firmly. C&D are drifting into conjecture but still potentially relevant I feel.

But even if we ignore all of them, our culture is built from the ground up upon the idea of privilege of birth. That there are some people born better or more deserving than the rest of us. When I refer to symbolism this is what I mean. Obviously the buck does not stop with the monarchy, England is hopelessly stratified by class all the way through, but the royal family exemplify this to absurd extremes.

At best I feel this hopelessly distorts and corrupts our collective sense of identity on a sub-conscious level. At worst....Well you must have some idea now how paranoid I'm capable of being about the way the world is run. (Not that I necessarily believe it all wholeheartedly, but I'm open to the possibility and inclined to suggest it more likely than the mainstream narrative)


On a pragmatic note: Tourism would be fine without them I think, we still have the history and the castles and the soldiers with silly hats etc. And I think the palaces would make great hotels and museums. They make great zoo exhibits I agree, just maybe not let them continue to own half the zoo and bribe the zoo keepers?


Anyway much love as always. You responded with considered points which is always worthy of respect, regardless of whether I agree with it all.

And that God's a fucking psycho too...so what's your point?

I'd rather spend eternity in hell than pay homage to any being as monstrous as the Judeo-Christian god.

Random stuff I found.
These guys are VER PRO Israel.

"The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation.
Adam and Gila Milstein initially moved to the United States from Israel with their two youngest daughters over 30 years ago.

Today, the Milstein’s two oldest daughters are married to Jews. Their third daughter, who was born in the US, is a pro-Israel activist "
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Reaching_Israelis_in_America.html


"The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation believes in strengthening Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people. We do so by supporting several non-profit organizations with similar goals related to this cause. "

"By focusing on college campuses, The Milstein Family Foundation seeks to enhance understanding, increase positive attitudes toward Israel on campus, and establish awareness and knowledge of issues beyond campus borders, thus broadening the perspectives of each student and deepening connections between Americans and the State of Israel."
http://milsteinff.org/

The Milsteins believe in creating synergies between Pro-Israel and Pro-Democracy organizations to empower our young generation to strengthen Democracy, freedom and other Judeo Christian principals in order to combat extremism and anti-Semitism.
http://www.hagerpacific.com/adam_milstein.html

I'll watch this in a bit but I just wanted to get some snippets off the Freedom Project Education site.

https://www.fpeusa.org/index.php/about-fpe/what-is-fpe

"Rooted firmly in Judeo-Christian values..." Completely made up after WW2 in order to establish that we were against the Holocaust even though we did little to help the Jews during WW2.

"At FPE we proudly refuse all government funding..." Yes we're all very proud of you.

"Public-school apologists have spent decades convincing parents that their children belong to the government schools. The results have been disastrous to education and undermine the primacy of parents." Because of de-funding pushed by Republicans which these people voted for.

"FPE is in no way influenced by teachers’ unions or answerable to the Department of Education, or state Departments of Public Instruction. We don’t indoctrinate students or promote a liberal agenda. And we don’t advocate for the removal of God from contemporary culture. We teach truth, rigor, and Christian values."

I can't wait to watch this, I'm sure it's a barrel of fun. Going through the courses I noticed there don't seem to be any art classes or theater. I guess that stuff is for hippies and faggots right?

I would name my child Metatron, in keeping with my judeo-christian heritage. Angel robots in disguise.

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

The moral standard of western civilization is founded upon judeo-christian beliefs. Read:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-that-Made-Your-World/dp/1595555455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366921071&sr=8-1&keywords=book+that+made+your+world

Following the morality the biblical God advocates is the hardest thing you will ever do. The standard of today is a superficial, politically correct morality where you pretend to be nice to people but curse them when they aren't around. God requires a transformation on the inside where you have genuine love for your fellow man.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Are you saying nigh universal adherence to certain moral standards isn't evidence for an absolute standard of morality?

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

You don't understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, or why He did it the way He did. It is morally consistent with His goodness and holiness, and there are logical reasons for why this is so. So far you are not interested in hearing them or discussing them. When you are let me know. In the end you don't have any excuse for suppressing the truth about Jesus, no matter what you think about how God acted in the Old Testament.

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

Basically, what you're saying is that because 2+2 probably equals four everywhere in the Universe, you are free to make absolute statements about morality? The fact is that your belief system leaves you with no justification for any absolute statement what so ever. Why should 2 + 2 always equal 4 in the first place? Can you tell me why the laws of physics should work in the same way 5 seconds from now without using circular reasoning?

Can you justify any piece of knowledge without God? If you can then tell me one thing you know and how you know it. Could you be wrong about everything you know?

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

It comes back to the same question: As the giver of life, and the adjudicator of His Creation, is it wrong for God to take life?

And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

The scripture is finished and anything which contradicts it is not of God.

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

What I am supposed to be discrediting? You're asking me to nail jello to a wall. You have not even defined what "successful" is supposed to mean beyond pure survival. In that case, every civilization has been successful. Tell me what your definition of success is supposed to be.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

What proof? The foundation of atheism stands upon the shifting sands of relative truth. You, the atheist, ultimately make yourself the measure of all truth. Because of that, you can't tell me a single fact about the world that you can justify.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

"Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong. "

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

Torturing babies for fun; not absolutely wrong?

I'm still waiting for you to give Stalin some kind, any kind of argument as to why he should adopt your morality and abandon his own. If you can't tell Stalin why he is wrong, then you have no hope of escaping the charge of incoherency.

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}