Recently, I made some comments about Muslims in the aftermath of the TX situation and at other times. My comments were inflammatory and indeed could be viewed as offensive and prejudiced. That is not the person I am. I know there are many Muslims who want to worship and be left alone as I do as a Christian. They have every right to do so, including: living here in the U.S., observing Ramadan, having a call to prayer, and practice other tenets that do not infringe upon the lives of others. I apologize to anyone of the Muslim faith who were offended by comments and ask for forgiveness, which is one thing both of our faiths share.
I didn't notice you making any comments like that, but if you did, I'm glad you're recognizing them as such and owning up to it Religion should be a healing force, not something that tears us apart.
I'm glad you recognize it. I mess up all the time but you seem to take it into account pretty quickly which is cool! ---------- Post added 10th May 2015 at 03:20 AM ---------- Don't get me wrong though, you are more than welcome to point out the fallacies in other religions. Don't worry about being PC all the time. Some stuff needs to be called out in order to progress this world for the better. I called out Egypt today for their blasphemy laws that are completely rediculous. Just use good sense!
No one is born socially aware, but no one is born with biases either. While it is easy to form biases in the world that we live in, it is up to use to be able to dictate the way that we will allow ourselves to be influenced by our environment. Being able to self-reflective and learn from our past behavior is vital. Except that Egypt is not a religion and a legislative body is not a diverse demographic. Fallacies can be found in written texts and models; but not in religious bodies which constitute groups of people who actions and values are not one. Regardless of whether we are talking about Christianity or Islam, good sense is directing our criticisms to those who manipulative and abuse religious beliefs rather than religions themselves as those criticism tend to exclusively manifest themselves as inaccurate generalizations.
Actually, that's not OK. One of the guiding policies in the EC Code of Conduct is respect for others' viewpoints. Posts that point out fallacies of *any* religion (or, for that matter, call out atheists for their lack of religious belief) are not OK, as they disrespect the views and faith and beliefs of others, many of whom rely on those beliefs. It's one of our least favorite tasks to go through and clean up threads where people start these discussions, because they always end up in flamefests. So we're pretty strict.
Well, I wonder how strictly it really is moderated because I seem to see people "pointing out fallacies" all the time. Any time someone discusses homosexuality in the Bible, they're pointing what they see as a problem with the religion or the religious text. It's hard to have a religious discussion because any slight criticism can be offensive. But religion is often relevant to homosexuality, so it comes up a lot.
A fallacies is faulty reasoning that renders an argument or belief invalid. It is not simply a matter of disagreeing with a certain belief expressed in a religious text. Which is why I said that there is a difference between criticizing certain aspects of a text rather than attempting to claim that a religion itself is misguided or wrong. Regardless, very few criticisms of religion on this site is about fallacies, especially when it comes to non-western religions. They are about generalizations and misconceptions. The underlining point that Chip is making this community is not the place to pick apart religion. We have religious members on this site who have beliefs to reconcile and topics to address; however, unless our discussion about religion is for the sake of those who are religious, there is very little that should be discussed. We do not allow religious members to push their beliefs on others and we will not allow non-religious people or people of other religious to discount the beliefs of others.
Let me apologize. This is not the place to pick apart religion. Outside this site, you should be allowed to criticize them though without fear of offending someone. That's what I'm trying to get across.
