No. The idea that homosexuality is “perverted” is, in itself, a perversion of reason, and one that religions are largely responsible for perpetuating. The world wouldn’t be better if it didn’t exist, no more than it would be somehow “better” if people with green eyes didn’t exist. The world would, however, be a lot better if people, particularly religious people, stopped making such a big stink about it. The idea that homosexuality is “perverted” is one of the nastier holdovers from our primitive, God-boggled past.
Not necessarily. I condemn Islam as it has more than its fair share of bad ideas, and relatively few corresponding good ideas to counterbalance the bad. Those Muslims who adhere to the bad ideas (martyrdom, jihad, incessantly condemning unbelievers, etc…), I wholeheartedly condemn. Fuck 'em. Those Muslims who don’t, and who ignore the bad shit and just try to get along? Those guys I’m OK with, although frankly I would prefer it if they were atheists.
The important thing to take away from this, is that when Muslims commit atrocities like the one visited upon the Charlie Hebdo offices, their bad behaviour is motivated by their bad beliefs, based on bad ideas. These bad ideas come from scripture. If you sit down and read the Quran, you’ll notice that there is ample textual substantiation for these bad ideas. That’s why I condemn Islam.
The reason this doesn’t translate to condemning all Muslims is that there are lots of Muslims who are happy to ignore some or all of the bad stuff.
Ergo, condemning Islam does not equate to condemning all Muslims.
Did you mean to say atheists, there? Anyway, atheism isn’t a belief system. To quote Sam Harris, an atheist is merely a person who has heard the claims of organised religion, read the books, and found the claims to be unfounded. Atheism doesn’t have any ideas, good or bad. It’s an absence of ideas…
If Atheism had scriptures, if it had a book of teachings and some of them were good and some of them were bad, and some atheists did bad things because of these bad teachings, then you could fairly condemn atheism while not condemning all atheists. However, since atheism has no such scriptures the comparison fails.
I agree. It does teach some good things, but the good doesn’t negate the bad.
But that’s the point. If you read the Quran you’ll see that, scripturally, the extreme version of Islam isn’t that extreme. It’s quite easy to draw a line between the scores and scores of verses cursing, scourging, mocking and condemning unbelievers with the violent actions of some Muslims. As Dawkins has observed, not all religions are the same. There are some religions which simply do not allow for such violence.
Assuming that _____ is standing in for “killing unbelievers who attack Islam”, as Charlie Hebdo’s writers arguably did, then by the light of Islam it isn’t really a perversion of reason. It’s actually quite easy to justify, given what Islamic scripture actually says. In all seriousness, have you read the Quran? If not, I recommend you do. You might find it quite eye-opening.
