Christianity could be a higher order way of organizing lives

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MMM you're running some strange apologetics for religion.

There was a big mess to wade through to get caught up on this thread, so I'll just throw some quick thoughts at you:

You mention Catholicism a lot in your examples-- this is a fun one because it's a hierarchical religion, and what one must believe to be a Catholic is not in dispute. And in enters transubstantiation. To not believe that the cracker and fermented grape juice is the literal body and blood of Christ is to not be a Catholic. It is not metaphor. It is a measurable claim about reality.

You keep claiming that the fact that not all Muslims are suicide bombers is evidence that the suicide bombers' convictions come from outside of the religion. An organization can be structured in a way that purposefully or accidentally creates certain behaviours in subsets of the population that it encompasses. Not all Nazis killed jews, or even thought the final solution was a good idea, the majority of Muslims don't actively support jihadists, and Catholics weren't cheering on the pedophiles in their clergy.

That last one is really important. The pedophile abuse in Catholicism can reasonably be ascribed to the structure of the organization. It's not like the first two examples where you can argue that members of the organizations tacitly support the transgressions of a violent deranged minority. In this case no one supported child molestation, but they supported and propped up an organization with a structure based in belief that obviously would lead to child molestation when you sum all the parts. Children were molested because of Catholicism. Not because there are bad people in all walks of life. The structure of Catholicism funnelled sexual misfits into authority roles with children and imposed on them rules of absolute abstinence. It isn't a surprise what happened, and it doesn't require Catholics individually or as a whole to believe pedophilia is a good thing or be active pedophiles for the religion to be responsible.

[MadMojoMonkey]

MMM you're running some strange apologetics for religion.

No, I'm not. A direct corollary of my point is that apologetics is stupid, misguided nonsense.
Faith applies to things which are believed despite a glaring dearth of evidence.
Applying evidence-based thinking to evangelize is stupid.
This is a direct antithesis to apologetics.

There was a big mess to wade through to get caught up on this thread, so I'll just throw some quick thoughts at you:

You mention Catholicism a lot in your examples-- this is a fun one because it's a hierarchical religion, and what one must believe to be a Catholic is not in dispute. And in enters transubstantiation. To not believe that the cracker and fermented grape juice is the literal body and blood of Christ is to not be a Catholic. It is not metaphor. It is a measurable claim about reality.

I was raised Catholic, so it's the religion I'm most familiar with. That's the only reason it stands out in my points.
FWIW, this is the best argument you've made. All evidence is clear that the cracker is a cracker and the wine is wine, and there isn't actual God-canibalism going on at every mass, yet this assertion is a central tenet of the Catholic procession of faith.

All I got is that I assert that continuing to claim your faith applies after the evidence is in is 'tarded.
I wonder what intelligent Catholics truly believe about the cracker and wine thing, though. People with doctorates in medicine are Catholics, and they certainly know the difference between wine and blood. Maybe they believe Jesus had wine for blood, and his divine liver just made it work. IDK.

The God of the Gaps is always available one step beyond where it was previously.

You keep claiming that the fact that not all Muslims are suicide bombers is evidence that the suicide bombers' convictions come from outside of the religion.

Yes, I do believe this. I don't think I've made that point in this thread, but it's between the lines, so fine.

I'd say the organization is responsible for the accidental repercussions of their beliefs, but the evidence clearly shows that there is nothing in Muslim religious texts that says suicide bombing in a proper way to go. At most, it has something akin to a Valhalla kind of vibe that if you die in valorous battle, you will be rewarded in the afterlife, but it's hard to think that the original text would consider suicide bombing an act of valor.

That last one is really important. The pedophile abuse in Catholicism can reasonably be ascribed to the structure of the organization.

I totally agree. I think this means the Catholic church is responsible for both the atrocities and the policy of cover-up which exacerbated the problem on an exponential scale. I think every one of those pedos should be imprisoned to keep them from any further pedoing. I do not think that bureaucratic policy of the institution is at all a reflection of any part of the religion. I do not recall any passage in the Bible which said that it's OK to pedo.

While the abuses of those priests was abetted by the institution of the Catholic church, they were never endorsed as an act of religious duty.

Just to clarify, I'm not defending Catholicism or Islam. I'm defining religion.

[BananaStand]

Yes, I do believe [the motivation to suicide-bomb comes from outside Islam]. I don't think I've made that point in this thread, but it's between the lines, so fine.

I'd say the organization is responsible for the accidental repercussions of their beliefs, but the evidence clearly shows that there is nothing in Muslim religious texts that says suicide bombing in a proper way to go. At most, it has something akin to a Valhalla kind of vibe that if you die in valorous battle, you will be rewarded in the afterlife, but it's hard to think that the original text would consider suicide bombing an act of valor.

I'd say the evidence is pretty murky, and doesn't "clearly" show anything. Yes, there are passages in the Quran that explicitly denounce violence. But there are also passages that seem to make exceptions. A quick google search finds plenty of examples. "17:33 And do not kill anyone which Allah has forbidden, except for a just cause"

And you really can't say that this has been perverted by fringe members of the religion. Do a google search for "Pew Research Muslim Bombings". They did studies asking muslims worldwide whether they think bombing is a viable political tool. They found HUGE fractions (like a third) of the population have no issues with putting a bomb on a bus full of civilians.

In the USA, and probably most of western Europe, the politically correct line is that "the vast majority of muslims are non-violent". ANd that's probably true if you never leave the west. However, it's demonstrably NOT true when you look at the religion as a whole.

It's really not clear whether Islam is a religion, or a political ideology, or both. But it's probably not just a religion.