Let’s all go to the readers’ comments below Robert Wright’s article and vote for the sensible comments, such as the one from Dan of East Bay, CA: “There is no supernatural God and we all know it. Why do we perpetuate this charade day after day, dissecting religious nuttery. There are so many important real-world issues to address right now, growing up and facing the 21st century like adults, instead of like children waiting for the tooth fairy, would really help us forward. Can you imagine what we could accomplish, in peace and progress, if the world became reason and empirical fact-based? We all know it, and yet our Religious-Correctness is weighing us deeper into all the illogical morass around us.”

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Steve Wells’ take on the which text is more violent, the Koran or the Bible.

http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/06/which-is-more-violent-bible-or-quran.html

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With a paucity of due respect: What the hell is the matter with this guy?  I wonder for just how long it is that Wright allows his ideas to resonate in his head before he decides to put pen to paper.  Unfortunately, any answer to such an inquiry is bound to be deeply troubling.
Wright obliviously relishes in non-sequitur thought and seems delighted in where he ends up.  To wit:
“So whenever we do things that influence the attitudes of believers, we shape the living meaning of their scriptures.  In this sense, it’s actually within the power of non-Muslim Americans to help determine the meaning of the Koran.”
“The less threatening that Muslims seem, the more welcoming Christians and Jews will be, and the more benign Christianity and Judaism will be.”
“You can even imagine a kind of virtuous circle: the less menacing each side seems, the less menacing the other side becomes — which in turn makes the first side less menacing still, and so on; the meaning of the Abrahamic scriptures would, in a real sense, get better and better and better.”
It is almost hard to believe that this is a serious argument from a serious writer.  Imagining the “kind of virtuous circle” which Wright proposes is like imagining that the masked man approaching your house in the dark of night is an untimely trick-or-treater will result in the intruder asking only for candy.

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What do Islam, Christianity and Judaism all have in common? They are three religions that are founded on the enslavement of women and happily advocate the mass murder of homosexuals, apostates and heretics. Just imagine how better off the human race would be by the sudden non-existance of these three religions.

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It’s very interesting to see how religions try to change their message according to the views of society.  They teach just enough of the dogma so one can tell the difference, yet they change the delivery and the tone so that people can say, “see, it is not that bad.  It’s about love.”  Sad thing is that people still buy into it.

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There are so many interpretations and ways that people absorb and act upon these that it all seems very convoluted and confusing - and for a good reason.  These interpretations are personal - but unfortunately, a personal interpretation of some text somehow affects another human, negatively.  I could care less about immaculate conceptions, flying horses, miracles, etc.  But when the very life of a person hangs on the personal interpretation of highly dubious books and words.  Homosexuality and adultery are NOT moral issues.

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“The Koran’s exhortations to jihad in the military sense are sometimes brutal in tone but are so hedged by qualifiers that Muhammad clearly doesn’t espouse perpetual war against unbelievers, and is open to peace with them.”

And herein lies the issue - the key that can lead to stupidity . . . the fact that the koran even mentions such violent episodes even in the vaguest hint of positive light (ie sanctioned by god).  If religion is about peace than I recommend sanitizing the scriptures to cast these events in more contemporary moral terms - or expunge them altogether - only problem is (for the believer) you wouldn’t be left with much.  Just some (even more) disjointed babbling and mythologizing.

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I think the gentler, more compassionate verses in the Koran would be attributed to the earlier stages while Mohammed was being persecuted in Mecca.  Later, when he came to power and controlled a large army in Medina, the more violent, less forgiving verses came to prominence.  Hard to tell.  Chronologically, it’s a mess.

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I do not think the Koran preaches what the Bible does

Moving Company Reviews

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With a paucity of due respect: What the hell is the matter with this guy?  I wonder for just how long it is that Wright allows his ideas to resonate in his head before he decides to put pen to paper.  Unfortunately, any answer to such an inquiry is bound to be deeply troubling.
Wright obliviously relishes in non-sequitur thought and seems delighted in where he ends up.  To wit:
“So whenever we do things that influence the attitudes of believers, we shape the living meaning of their scriptures.  In this sense, it’s actually within the power of non-Muslim Americans to help determine the meaning of the Koran.”
“The less threatening that Muslims seem, the more welcoming Christians and Jews will be, and the more benign Christianity and Judaism will be.”
“You can even imagine a kind of virtuous circle: the less menacing each side seems, the less menacing the other side becomes — which in turn makes the first side less menacing still, and so on; the meaning of the Abrahamic scriptures would, in a real sense, get better and better and better.”
It is almost hard to believe that this is a serious argument from a serious writer.  Imagining the “kind of virtuous circle” which Wright proposes is like imagining that the masked man approaching your house in the dark of night is an untimely trick-or-treater will result in the intruder asking only for candy.

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I am an atheist, but I also realize that universal atheism is not going to come about overnight.  In the meantime, as Wright is doing in this article, the relationship between Christians and Muslims needs to be cooled down, and an alliance formed between Christians and Muslims to, together, stamp out the fanatics and terrorists.  To put Wright’s article in the Hall of Shame is more than inappropriate, it smacks of a childish all-or-nothing simplicity in viewing the nuances of world society.

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