Is there an Islamic text that sanctions honor killings? Which one?

Ah, but Jesus is God, so if God said to "put [the person who tried to convince you to convert to another faith] to death", then it's really Jesus who said it, no?

Look, I'm not going to argue theology with you. As religions go, Christianity is particularly easy to twist and bend to make it fit whatever kind of morality the Christian likes, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. But the fact is that until fairly recently, most Christians would have been horrified by your claim that the moral edicts contained in the Old Testament can safely be ignored, and even today about 40% of Americans would be similarly horrified. Just as many (most?) Muslims today are horrified by 'moderate' Muslims who pretend that the principle of abrogation never existed, and therefore that Mohammad's early injunction that "there is no compulsion in religion" still applies.

I agree that Christianity, as Jesus probably intended it, is a lot better than Islam as Mohammad probably intended it. And I agree that Christianity in its 21st century incarnation is better than Islam in its 21st century incarnation. All I'm saying is, Islam's awfulness shouldn't make us pretend that Christianity's and Judaism's awfulness don't exist.

Okay, how about Deuteronomy 13:

"If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. 5 That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.

6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. 9 You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.

12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you to live in 13 that wicked men have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. Destroy it completely, [a] both its people and its livestock. 16 Gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. It is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt. 17 None of those condemned things [b] shall be found in your hands, so that the LORD will turn from his fierce anger; he will show you mercy, have compassion on you, and increase your numbers, as he promised on oath to your forefathers, 18 because you obey the LORD your God, keeping all his commands that I am giving you today and doing what is right in his eyes."

And as I clearly explained, a 'historical' description of The Eternal Source of Morality's deeds will necessarily influence the morality of those who believe in said description. And it did.

Wellington, I'm sorry to say you're showing a little more stupidity in every post you make.

About point one:

- Even without results, biologists can assess the potential of each type of stem cells. Also, even if ESCs only had a, say, 50% chance of yielding results superior to those of ASCs, halting funding for such research for religious reasons would still be a crime against humanity. The only agenda I have (in this context) is to reduce human suffering and to create conditions favorable to scientific research.

- Please, no dishonest semantic trickery with the meaning of 'fundamentalist'. You know perfectly well what I mean: The Pope is a fundamentalist in the sense that he's not a moderate.

About point two:

- Do you honestly think that it's rational to base any one of your beliefs on what a bunch of 18th century men believed, no matter how "wise" they were? First, Ben Franklin foolishly bought into the Christian dogma that human nature is intrinsically selfish. We who live in the 21st century know that this dogma is false. While selfishness is part of the human psyche, so is altruism. Evolution has shaped our brains so that we have empathy, an instinct for fairness, and a desire to help other people.

- Second, while Christianity can motivate some people to be better than they would be otherwise, so can atheistic ideologies such as secular humanism, which unlike Christianity don't require their 'followers' to delude themselves.

- Third, "the last hundred years" don't show what happens without religion, they show what happens with evil ideologies. Which is something we already knew from the previous 5000 years, obviously, although 20th century weapons admittedly enlarged the scope of these ideologies' effects. Secular ideologies can be good or evil, just as religions can be good or evil. But, of course, secular ideologies don't require self-deception, and therefore put us on a better footing to make moral decisions.

- Fourth, if your point was that a lack of religion in societies always leads to oppression and violence, look at Sweden. The Swedish population is 80% non-religious, and the remaining 20% is mostly composed of moderate Christians who only go to Church on Christmas, if at all. The only problem with their society is... yep, you guessed it: Islam.

About point three:

I see you've borrowed another semantic trick from our religious friends. They too love to play around with the meaning of "religion".

If "making a religion out of something" means being passionate about it, then I guess I'm religious about my anti-theism. But in that case, I don't actually have anything against "religion".

But if "religion" means a moral code dependent on a set of faith-based beliefs, then I'm not making a religion out of anything, because I don't take anything on faith.

My evidence? The three advantages I've mentioned are common knowledge, do a little googling. As for results, neither ESCs nor ASCs have produced ground-breaking results yet. There's a myth circulating around the net that ASCs have produced a cure for dozens of diseases, but a myth is all it is: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/03/adult_s...

Regarding the ethical question, you know, there's a reason that the vast majority of people who oppose stem cell research are Christian fundamentalists. Most human beings, Christian fundies included, don't give a shit about 'life'. We eat cows and squash bugs without a second thought. What humans tend to care about is sentience or consciousness. Christian fundies mistakenly believe that embryos have this property. Sane people realize they're wrong. There *are* a few people who honestly and rationally put value on human DNA, or something, but those people are rare enough to be irrelevant.

As for the main point:

1) Lincoln had to worry about managing his country's limited resources. I don't.

2) Lincoln knew that the current war would end relatively quickly, after which he could give consideration to other matters. How soon do you think the 'war' on Islam is going to end? When will I finally have permission to 'fight' irrationality?

3) Christians, Hindus, Jews, and other religious folk repulse ME (and other anti-theists). And yet, somehow, I manage to make common cause with them against Islam anyway. Why can't they do the same?

4) As Nykos has pointed out above, the attitude that people in the West tend to have about religion in general is part of the problem we have with Islam. Western-raised people have (undeserved) respect for religious beliefs, just because they're religious. If it wasn't for this dogmatic respect, Islam would be treated just like we currently treat evil secular ideologies, like Nazism and communism. Getting rid of the taboo protecting religion will certainly weaken Islam.

You're raving.

That embryonic stem cells have advantages over adult ones is so obvious I feel silly having to write this. Do you understand what the point of stem cell research is? It's the ability to make any kind of tissue or organ we want. Do you understand what makes embryonic stem cells different from adult ones? With a little nudging, they have the ability to turn into nearly any type of cell, because they haven't differentiated yet, unlike adult stem cells.

So that's one advantage of embryonic stem cells: Extreme flexibility. Another one is their availability: They're easy to obtain from embryos. Another one is their quasi-immortality: A single embryonic stem cell line can produce an endless number of cells, given enough time.

Now, the latest data suggests that there are techniques that can be used to isolate a certain type of adult stem cells which could in turn be granted flexibility comparable to that of embryonic stem cells, given more research. But this is only necessary because American scientists have been forced to tinker with ASCs just to get them to do what ESCs could already do, when, obviously, they could have used their time (and financial ressources) to make further progress with ESCs. All this waste, just because of morons who think that microscopic clumps of cells have magical 'souls'.

In any event, your bit about my trying to "establish some kind of rough equivalency between Islamic fanatics and devout Christian believers" shows you've completely missed the point, a point I've made exquisitely clear in the last sentence of my post. Try giving it another read before posting your next rant.

Why not do both? Attack religion in general AND make common cause with religious believers against Islam, I mean?

In my job as a software designer, I am currently at odds with one of my colleagues about picking the best solution to a problem we're currently facing. I've bluntly told him that the solution he's advocating is insane and will make our company lose months of time and millions of dollars. He said something similar about my solution.

And yet, we're capable of putting our feelings about that particular conflict aside and join forces to work on another project our company is involved in. We didn't have to concede anything, or stop criticizing each other, or "agree to disagree" or any other such nonsense. We simply recognize the fact that being opponents in one context doesn't change the reality that we're allies in another context.

I'm sure you understand the analogy.

That's a slightly naive thing to say. Directly, physically hurting someone is not the only way to harm them. Holding back stem cell research, as Bush and his millions of (mostly Christian) supporters have done for the last 8 years, will end up harming those with otherwise incurable diseases. Repressing teenagers' sexuality by making them believe that extra-marital sexual urges are Devil-sent harms them. Socially ostracizing a family of atheists who live in the Bible belt harms them. Filling governmental positions with fundamentalist Christians from Jerry Falwell's Liberty 'University' harms everyone in the USA.

The point is, there are various degrees of harm, and just because Islam is the #1 offender doesn't mean we should act as if #2 and #3 are completely harmless.

Good article, Raymond.

Your main point is well taken: Islam is definitely the worst of the three Abrahamic religions. However, you're being too soft on Christianity and Judaism. I agree with the distinction you make between descriptive and prescriptive scripture, but it's not quite as clear cut as you want it to be. If all the Bible described was the deeds of various Israelites, your argument would be a good one, but it also describes the actions and words of God, the Transcendent and Eternal Source of Morality; you can't expect Christians to take God's deeds as mere facts that say nothing about the way they should act. For example, when God/Jesus clearly says that those who don't believe in him are apparently so evil that they'll be sent to Hell upon their death, it's inevitable that at least some devout Christians will see non-Christians in a worse light than they would have if Jesus had said instead that all good people go to Heaven regardless of their beliefs or lack thereof. When descriptive religious scripture is about God, it becomes prescriptive.