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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be mixing up "Western values" and "Christian values" whereas Christian values are very much against the accumulation of wealth, whereas "Western values" seem to be all about worshipping wealth to the exclusion of all other considerations and even worshipping those who deliberately exploit others to amass an ungodly amount of wealth.

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If you think that small difference means that Western values are not Christian values, then you have no idea how large the gulf between your values and Islamic values are.

Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?

Those values seem to be exactly the ones being discarded by the Christo-fascists of the USA.

My point is that the so-called Christian values are nothing to do with the reported teachings of Jesus and instead are used to justify the exact opposite.

I did not realize that the point of discussion had changed to specifically Christo-fascists of the USA. My point still stands in regard to the vast majority of Christians you will meet.

One thing that I can not stand about some modern fanatics is the representation of 1% of a population as if they represent the whole. Don't bring up Christo-fascists of the USA as representative of Christian values. That's highjacking the subject to your pet cause.

This is an awesome discussion.

It's showing that we need to make some finer distinctions to meaningfully engage with each other on the topic.

It beats the heck out of each side assuming bad-faith.

> Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?

Sorry, I thought you were pointing out the many issues with the current US administration and you were showing the difference between Christo-fascists and Christians who value the teachings of Jesus.

The ACTUAL teachings by Supreme Leader Khamenei (remember, the HIGHEST Shia authority according to some) include that school girls who are to be killed for not wearing hats should be raped, because the Muslim God judges children based on if they have been raped. With teachings like this, I'm OK with muslims not following the teachings.

Most of these arguments on the effect of different religions tend to be a bit silly. Islam is much more related to Christianity and Judaism than either of those two are to each other.

Language, cultural history, and geography tend to play a bigger role on society than the monotheistic religions do.

As neither a Muslim nor a Christian, but have lived among both, the dismissive argument "A is more similar to B than C" should not mean "I don't need to be concerned about A or B or C".

Nowhere in the passage is it saying that. Merely that A, B, and C are the same and their difference play less of role in society than we think.

Radical Christians are no different from radical Muslims who are no different than radical Jews.

  > Radical Christians are no different from radical Muslims who are no different than radical Jews.

Be that as it may, by examining the frequency of terror attacks the percentage of what you call "radical Muslims" is high enough that they do not need to be termed "extremist Muslims". Whereas Jewish and Christian terrorist attacks are attested to such a small percentage of the population that the terms "radical Christian" and "extremist Christian" are effectively synonyms.

Pretty sure Palestinians would take issue with your opinion on that. And that’s not even considering historical records and precedent of any of those religions.

Bashing one monotheistic religion while trying to contort logic around supporting the others is a fruitless endeavor.

So you choose a group who has been murdering our people for over a century, and hold them as an example of a group that would take issue with Jewish radicals?

Let's take your argument at face value - let's assume that Jewish radicals are as common among the Jews as Muslim radicals are among the Muslims. We disagree about the cause and the effect in the holy land, so let's disregard it. Please list for me all terror attacks that are plausibly attributed to Jews - worldwide. Then tell me how much larger the Muslim population is than the Jewish population. I'll use your own numbers to respond with an appropriate number of terror attacks plausibly attributed to Muslims.

If I can't beat the target number I'll rescind my stance.

No. I would choose a group that has been suffering from genocide in one area, and ethnic cleansing in many others. Not a hundred years ago. Not 75 years ago. Today, in the here and now.

We can go back and forth on this however many times you want. The issue I am raising is that all three religions are dangerous when used to justify murderous goals. You unfortunately are hung up on the idea that a religion is less bad or more bad than the others.

That is an irrational foundation for me to spend any more time debating against.

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