Well, there it is--you have addressed your own double standard. I mean, you are here--addressing individual Christians on the whole of their religion, "holding them to account", as it were, depending. But for all the reasons listed, you cannot or will not do that with Islam, even though people of the Islamic faith have run down your national brethren with their cars. I mean, let's be real.
Yeah. Basically. I can't hide it really.
On paper, I should be opposed to all religions equally. But in practice Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world (about 4 billion people and over 50% of the world's population in 2012) and so are going to get a disproportionate amount of criticism. Purely from a personal standpoint, I have no relationship with Islam to speak of. I think I tried to learn how Muslims pray and read a bit of the Qur'an to understand the experience of it. But pretty much nothing...
meanwhile, Christmas is coming. There is no escape. You will be merry or else!
To take that as an example, I don't hate Christmas, but it does feel like an obligation. the social side of it is fine as it is nice day with friends and family in the middle of winter when there is nothing else to do. I have a soft spot for Christmas pudding a brandy as well. Sausages wrapped in Bacon (or pigs in blankets as my mum calls them) are a treat once a year for Christmas Dinner. But (and I think I can say it on CF) the birth of Jesus has nothing to do with fir trees, tinsel, flying reindeer or old white men with big bushy beards breaking in to your home in the middle of the night and leaving stuff for kids. If it was a religious holiday for a people who belong to a specific religion to practice behind closed doors- that's fine.
But it's not. Christmas contaminates everything for at least an entire month and if you don't join in you're "anti-social". When Christians put their faith out in public like this, to be abused for whatever commercial purpose someone can come up with, its hard not to have something to criticise of Christianity and the way it is privileged in supposedly secular societies.
(On that note; what on earth have chocolate eggs and rabbits got to do with the Resurrection?)
I hope you can see what I'm getting at. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is not even in the bible but we still get films, music and cuddly toys for this icon but pointing that out is taboo. After all, there is a commandment about worshiping false idols.
When the Christian faith is there in your face and has let itself be perverted beyond the wildest imagination of satan, its begging for someone to question what the heck is going on. Atheists should do it, but Christians should too. You really shouldn't let people abuse your religion like that if it really is sacred.
When you step back from this, from a Christian point of view, it is nonsensical. We get asked the same questions over and over and over and over. And over and over and over and over. We see Muslims being largely and at BEST left alone. Sometimes, defended (yes, defended). And yes, while Christians are far from perfect (believe me), we are not at present perpetrating mass terrorism on the world, orchestrated terrorism, that a small faction of Muslims are. Admittedly small, but even so, excruciatingly devastating.
And yet, from atheists, largely.....meh.
Atheists don't like addressing this. But they should.
I don't really have answers for Islamic Fundamentalism (or Terrorism for that matter). My impression is that until the 1970's the Middle East was getting more secular, but then the oil crisis increased the revenue for various governments there and they spent it on propagating aggressive interpretations of Islam. That, and the 1979 revolution when Iran finally made Islam a system of government (although again, this is just sketchy history for me).
Statistically, you are
16 times more likely to die from getting struck by lightning than in a terrorist attack (of whatever motivation). The Media report events all over the world as a 24/7 industry and they pick breaking news stories of terrorist attacks and gun violence because it makes for real-time coverage. Our perceptions of what is going on is filtered through the media. We'd like to live in a world where no-one gets hurt and nobody kills one another, so terrorism is an emotional issue. It gets TV ratings, clicks, likes, shares and votes. Its not something we should ignore, but rationally if we are 14 times more likely to die by falling in our bathtub than terrorism, it seems weird to want to undermine our civil liberties to defend ourselves against terrorism but not ban bathtubs as a death trap.
Christians do get a disproportionate amount of abuse too, for the same reason. The media spotlight focuses on the "bad stuff" individuals Christians do and then pretends that's representative of a whole religion. Its not fair. But at the same time Muslims get a disproportionate amount of blame for Terrorism when between 1980 and 2005,
94% of terrorist attacks have been by non-Muslims in the US.
you can say I'm avoiding the issue which is fair enough because I am trying to down play it, but there is a big difference between criticising Muslims and Islam as individuals by exercising free speech and producing government policies which threaten freedom of religion and target a specific group of citizens as a potential threat for having the wrong kind of ideas. In the end no-one benefits from the latter because that radicalises people and sets a precedent for threatening other people's liberties based on what they are suspected of doing- not what they have been proven to do in a court of law. That's why I'd be more inclined to minimise it and try to take the emotion out of the issue because I think the solution could be worse than the problem itself. I don't know what practical value those criticisms have outside of a person-to-person context which, as I don't know any Muslims, I'm not really able to make anyway. I'll just try to not eat a bacon sandwich in front of them or enjoy it too publicly.
