Islam and "The Perfect Man"

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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Learned Nand » Thu Jun 15, 2017 7:55 pm

cmsellers wrote:It's childish to say something is untrue when it's true and then complain it hurts your feelings.

She probably shouldn't have started off by saying that the billboard was untrue when it wasn't, literally speaking. However, it's neither childish nor unreasonable to complain that your feelings are hurt even by a truthful statement.

If, for example, I had recently divorced my wife because I found out she was cheating on me, I could reasonably complain about my feelings being hurt by someone who chose to insult me by pointing this out, even though his statements would have been factually accurate. Factual accuracy isn't the only thing that matters when determining whether hurt feelings are reasonable. You also have to look at whether those factual statements are relevant, and whether they are intended to cause harm.

In the case of the billboard, both of those criteria suggest that hurt feelings could be reasonable. ACT's targeting of a discrete and insular minority suffering from discrimination suggests an invidious purpose. And even though the facts on the billboard may, for the most part, be literally true, the fact that they do not determine how most Muslims actually behave (especially for American Muslims) means that they aren't particularly relevant. So hurt feelings are completely reasonable in this context.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Delta Jim » Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:12 pm

Anglerphobe wrote:it is clearly unfair to compare and contrast the horrible things Muhammad did to real living people with those that, while constituting part of Biblical tradition, did not actually happen.


True, but the Bible still echoes contemporary views on morality (it's kind to the entire point of it). So while the events may not have actually happened, real people of the time still believed those things to be morally acceptable.

And that's assuming ACT aren't Biblical Literalists. If they're the kinds of people who believe the events in the Bible actually happened in real life then treating the stories as historical events is fair game.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Crimson847 » Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:48 am

cmsellers wrote:@Kivutar:
I halfway agree with you. I don't think it was intended to open the eyes of moderate Muslims, and I do think it was probably intended to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment.

The problem is that on its own, the billboard is nothing more than a statement of fact which says nothing explicitly about Islam. Yet right-thinking people acted in a completely predictable way. Indiana's moderate Muslims reacted in childish fashion (though to her credit, Ms. Khatri didn't trot out the "there should be limits on free speech" line that CAIR and Europe's "moderate" Muslims are so fond of), and the Democratic Congressman made a really stupid analogy. For people who are on the fence and watching, moderate Muslims and their right-thinking defenders come off looking unreasonable. And it's amazing to me that almost no one here sees a problem in the reactions of the two people quoted in the article.


It's amazing to me that you don't see the same problem is present with the billboard. In both cases they're portraying their opponents as uniformly extremist and insulting them to boot. You note that this is a problem when moderate Muslims do it, but at the same time you say you don't see anything wrong with the billboard. On the face of it, this is inconsistent.

What I think is an unreasonable position is this instinct among right-thinking people to either ignore criticisms of Islam or engage in tu-quoquism with flawed examples from other religions, on the assumption that doing otherwise licenses discrimination against Muslims. It's entirely possible to say: Islam is inherently problematic, but that doesn't mean we should close our borders to Muslims or inherently distrust people just because they were brought up in a deeply flawed religion.



Crimson847 wrote:Personally, when I want to persuade someone to give me a fair hearing, I always, always open by insulting them and calling their God a monster.

Yes, but you're still missing the point, which was that the billboard isn't going to persuade anyone of anything, and I don't think it was intended to.


And if their goal wasn't to persuade, what do you suppose their goal was?

If their goal was not to persuade anyone but simply to incite people against Muslims and their defenders, as I suspect you're going to argue, then why does that not bother you? Or if it does bother you, why are you arguing that there wasn't anything particularly objectionable about their actions here?

Crimson847 wrote:As I said, even in his own time and place, many of his followers objected to rape and genocide, until God revealed to the example for all humanity that those were encouraged and required respectively.


And how does this change the fact that both holy books depict their God commanding his followers to commit rape and genocide?
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:13 am

Crimson847 wrote:
cmsellers wrote:And it's amazing to me that almost no one here sees a problem in the reactions of the two people quoted in the article.


It's amazing to me that you don't see the same problem is present with the billboard. In both cases they're portraying their opponents as uniformly extremist and insulting them to boot. You note that this is a problem when moderate Muslims do it, but at the same time you say you don't see anything wrong with the billboard. On the face of it, this is inconsistent.

I don't have an issue with moderate Muslims portraying their opponents as universally extremist. Where did you get that idea? I do have a major problem when "moderate" Muslim organizations like CAIR or the MCB engage in tu quoquism with irrelevant examples, get offended when people ask them to denounce Islamic extremism, and calling for limitations on free speech in the names of preserving their feelings. Or in this case, when they react to a billboard stating unpleasant facts about Mohammad by falsely calling it untrue.

Crimson847 wrote:And if their goal wasn't to persuade, what do you suppose their goal was?

If their goal was not to persuade anyone but simply to incite people against Muslims and their defenders, as I suspect you're going to argue, then why does that not bother you? Or if it does bother you, why are you arguing that there wasn't anything particularly objectionable about their actions here?

I think their goal was to get Muslims and their right-thinking allies up in arms and saying stupid things in response to it, in which they succeeded admirably. They could be motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry, or they could, like me, simply be fed up with the whitewashing of Islam that right-thinking people like to do. That whitewashing is why I don't have an issue with the billboard. Tess once told me she thought the mantra about Islam being a "religion of peace" is a straw man, but I was literally taught that in Middle School. I've learned from TCS that right-thinking people are stubborn and no matter what I say I won't convince you that Islam qualitatively different from other religions, but I can't really fault people for trying.

Crimson847 wrote:And how does this change the fact that both holy books depict their God commanding his followers to commit rape and genocide?

You're changing the subject. The point was that you tried to excuse Mohammad with a bit of whataboutery, to which I pointed out that A. Muslims hold Mohammad up as an exemplar for all humanity, and B. he didn't even have the best moral standards of the Muslim Arabs of his time.

But to answer your question: Salafist groups have cropped up repeatedly holding up Mohammad as an example when they kill infidel men, enslave their women, and do various other unpleasant things. You can point to some isolated examples of followers of other religions doing the same, but not even one modern-day Christian, Jewish, or Hindu version of Boko Haram, the Taliban, al-Shabab, or ISIS.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Tesseracts » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:28 am

You can point to some isolated examples of followers of other religions doing the same, but not even one modern-day Christian, Jewish, or Hindu version of Boko Haram, the Taliban, al-Shabab, or ISIS.

Why does it matter if the violence is modern day or not?
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jun 16, 2017 6:04 am

Tesseracts wrote:Why does it matter if the violence is modern day or not?

There was nothing like liberal democracy in the world when the Crusaders were killing in Jesus's name. It wasn't common or well-known when thuggees were killing in Kali's name. The Crusades and the thuggees were a unique product of their time.

However Salafism seems like a problem inherent to Islam. Salafists have seen pluralism and liberal democracy, and they've unequivocally rejected it. Many prominent Salafists came from or lived in the West.

Of course the problem is that Salafism is about emulating the example of Mohammad, and given Mohammad's central role in Islam, it's always at risk of resurfacing, even if we defeat it this time. Purist movements like it took power on the fringes of the Muslim world several times, even if Salafism is relatively modern. Following the example of Mohammad produces the Almohads, Abdur Rahman Khan, and ISIS. Following the example of Christ leads to Albigensians, Hussites, and Christadelphians.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:33 am

cmsellers wrote: I do have a major problem when "moderate" Muslim organizations like CAIR or the MCB engage in tu quoquism with irrelevant examples, get offended when people ask them to denounce Islamic extremism, and calling for limitations on free speech in the names of preserving their feelings.

First, as far as I can tell, nobody here is calling for any restriction on free speech.

Second, a Muslim can reasonably be offended for being asked to denounce Islamic extremism because she don't think she should have to, not because she's okay with that extremism. Requiring Muslims to denounce Islamic extremism is basically the same as insisting that black people should be handling black-on-black crime. There is an inherent bigotry in holding each individual responsible for the behavior of the entire group. It's that bigotry that causes people to take offense, not the attack on Islamic extremism.

Finally, it's not so much tu quoquism when there are people of other religions who believe themselves to be moral, and Muslims not to be, but if the same reasoning applied to Muslims were applied to them, they would have to conclude themselves to be immoral. That's not whataboutism; that's pointing out an inconsistency in an argument. The problem with "well in your country you lynch negroes" was a) that that was usually criticizing a different kind of wrong premised on different moral questions, and b) that the person being criticized usually didn't think that lynchings were okay either. Neither of those elements is applicable here.

Anyway, you know that I am one of the last people to defend religious belief for any reason. And my point here obviously isn't to defend Islam as a belief system, because it (like every other non-scientific epistemology) suffers from the most fatal of all flaws: it's wrong. But even though it's not per se more wrong than pretty much any other belief system that substantial numbers of Americans hold, it is subject to unique and discriminatory attention. So it's reasonable to object to the discrimination, and you can do that without opining on the merits of the beliefs themselves. And when someone does get it wrong on the merits, that doesn't undermine their point about the discrimination.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Crimson847 » Fri Jun 16, 2017 8:04 am

cmsellers wrote:I don't have an issue with moderate Muslims portraying their opponents as universally extremist. Where did you get that idea?


You objected to the "right-thinking" response to this billboard in part on the grounds that they compared Act For America to groups like the KKK, saying this would be perceived as portraying all critics of Islam as comparable to terrorists. Or, more specifically:

cmsellers wrote:how many people will object to the suggestion that a billboard stating true facts is an evil on par with ISIS and the Klan?


Did I misinterpret that part?

I think their goal was to get Muslims and their right-thinking allies up in arms and saying stupid things in response to it, in which they succeeded admirably. They could be motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry, or they could, like me, simply be fed up with the whitewashing of Islam that right-thinking people like to do. That whitewashing is why I don't have an issue with the billboard. Tess once told me she thought the mantra about Islam being a "religion of peace" is a straw man, but I was literally taught that in Middle School. I've learned from TCS that right-thinking people are stubborn and no matter what I say I won't convince you that Islam qualitatively different from other religions, but I can't really fault people for trying.


I'm not asking you to fault them for trying to convince people that Islam is qualitatively different from other religions. I'm asking you why you don't fault them for not doing that, and indeed for making that task more difficult. They made a lousy argument and acted like assholes, which makes critics of Islam look bad just as the reaction makes defenders of Islam look bad. This seems contrary to your goal if you want critics of Islam to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as cranks and racists, and it's the same basic misstep you've already criticized when the responders made it, yet you say it's not a problem. Why is that?

Crimson847 wrote:And how does this change the fact that both holy books depict their God commanding his followers to commit rape and genocide?


The point was that you tried to excuse Mohammad with a bit of whataboutery


Your argument in your own words is that Islam is "qualitatively different from other religions". Not just that it has flaws, but that those flaws are significantly worse than those of any other major religion. If your whole point is "Islam is worse than other religions", then what other religions do is in fact relevant.

If you'd simply said "Islam has flaws" without judging it as better or worse than other religions, then you'd be correct to object if I brought up Christianity's flaws. Of course, you'd also have a shorter and more boring thread, because I don't think anyone here objects to the idea that Islam has problems in and of itself.

But to answer your question: Salafist groups have cropped up repeatedly holding up Mohammad as an example when they kill infidel men, enslave their women, and do various other unpleasant things. You can point to some isolated examples of followers of other religions doing the same, but not even one modern-day Christian, Jewish, or Hindu version of Boko Haram, the Taliban, al-Shabab, or ISIS.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Fri Jun 16, 2017 11:48 am

pls stop bringing up hinduism in your examples, it's sorta grating when you're completely wrong about tons of comparisons there.
The mahabharata is not the old testament, it's the Trojan War. Hinduism has almost no abrahamic equivalents, no matter how much people like to pretend Krishna was hipster jesus. It's much closer to the old combinations of various god-cults like Egyptian, Greek/Roman, and Norse mythologies. Its closest modern world equivalent is Shinto.
The mahabharata isn't even the illiad, that'd be the Bhagavad Gita. It's like the trojan war if its actual story wasn't lost. And its protagonist isn't Krishna, it's the Pandavas and Karna. Krishna is literally a supporting character in the books. And it's not a book of rules. It's just an epic. So that comparison's completely worthless. Krishna's not any sort of perfect man either, no matter how much krishna cultists think he is. It's in the very goddamn origin story. He steals milk and clothes like any other kid and is basically just an actual guy. That's emphasized many many times in the goddamn books. Each one of the pandavas has several moral failings, except Dharmaraja (Yudhistra, literally the son of justice). The plot of the Mahabharata started with people gambling a kingdom away.

If hinduism didn't exist, people would read the mahabharata as a dark fantasy series more than anything else.

Then there's the idea that hindus don't use the vedas (NOT THE GODDAMN GITA OR MAHABHARATA OR RAMAYANA) to justify bad stuff. They do. All the fucking time. The new caste system comes from a reinterpretation (not 'mis-'. Hinduism at its core accepts that its books were written by people. This is very directly emphasized in the mahabharata written by vyasa and the ramayana written by valmiki) of the chaturvarna system that makes moving across castes forbidden. This pretty much went on to create the caste system people know about today (fun fact, the caste system isn't historically supported. There have been inter-caste marriages in the mahabharata). We were reinterpreting the old testament to create bigotry since the time christ was still alive.

Then there's the idea that Thuggees are some sort of hindu equivalent to isis or the crusaders. You know who the thuggees were? a cult of bandits. They're dacoits. THEY ROBBED PEOPLE FOR MONEY. It doesn't even fucking matter that they worship Kali, every fucking family in India that hasn't been affected by modern events has a house god. That's why there are millions of gods, because hinduism is about as much of an actual thing as 'india'. historical india is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, bits of Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan. India itself is pretty much just mughal lands with south indian kingdoms tacked on. Similarly, if someone was going to define hinduism properly, they'd be hard pressed to come up with a good definition that doesn't include Buddhism, Sikkhism, Jainism, Hindu Agnosticism and Hindu Atheism. So the thuggees are hindus. But what this means is "The thuggees have an indian religion". Not very useful.

Then there's the fact that there's plenty of stuff to worry about in MODERN hinduism, the real religion that's not entirely made up by the british. Modi is a problem because he's a hindu nationalist. In that he thinks hindus, the majority religion in india, are pushed to the side for more minority representation because of Nehru's post-independence secular policies. These people have a PM IN THE BIGGEST DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD. That's a big fucking issue directly produced by hinduism. It might not be as flashy as ISIS, but ISIS doesn't have nukes. India's a nuclear power at actual land war with Pakistan right now ("border skirmishes" that are Seal Team 6 style counter-insurgency operations that basically destroy unacknowledged pakistani terrorist bases that are on the border). And the fact that we have people who think Muslims oppressed us and killed billions of hindus historically, and are openly revisionist about hindu contribution to the subcontinent and about overplaying muslim atrocities, while in war with a state with a state religion, is a big fucking deal exacerbated by the leaders being hindu.

BASICALLY GO USE SOMEONE ELSE FOR YOUR EXAMPLES.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:37 pm

aviel wrote:First, as far as I can tell, nobody here is calling for any restriction on free speech.

Not here, and I already said that that's to her credit.

aviel wrote:Second, a Muslim can reasonably be offended for being asked to denounce Islamic extremism because she don't think she should have to, not because she's okay with that extremism. Requiring Muslims to denounce Islamic extremism is basically the same as insisting that black people should be handling black-on-black crime. There is an inherent bigotry in holding each individual responsible for the behavior of the entire group. It's that bigotry that causes people to take offense, not the attack on Islamic extremism.

I don't expect individual Muslims to denounce Islamic terrorist attacks, but I do expect organizations like CAIR and the MCB to. If you claim to represent American or British Muslims and an American or British Muslim commits a terrorist attack, I'd say you have an obligation to say something about it. I also think that these groups should more proactively condemn dangerously authoritarian attitudes present in their communities, such as support for blasphemy laws, and yet instead they have a tendency to say "there ought to be limits to free speech" whenever someone says something mean about Islam.

aviel wrote:Finally, it's not so much tu quoquism when there are people of other religions who believe themselves to be moral, and Muslims not to be, but if the same reasoning applied to Muslims were applied to them, they would have to conclude themselves to be immoral. That's not whataboutism; that's pointing out an inconsistency in an argument. The problem with "well in your country you lynch negroes" was a) that that was usually criticizing a different kind of wrong premised on different moral questions, and b) that the person being criticized usually didn't think that lynchings were okay either. Neither of those elements is applicable here.

Sorry, I'm not following your argument here.

Crimson847 wrote:Did I misinterpret that part?

Very much so. I was saying that I expect a lot people are going to see the overblown reaction and react much as I did, against the people who are attacking the billboard rather than the billboard itself.

Crimson847 wrote:hey made a lousy argument and acted like assholes, which makes critics of Islam look bad just as the reaction makes defenders of Islam look bad.

See, I don't think it's a lousy argument. Insomuch as they're making any argument, it would seem to be that there's a problem in Islam because Muhammad is supposed to be an example for everyone to follow, yet he's utterly terrible. What's wrong with that argument?

Crimson847 wrote:Your argument in your own words is that Islam is "qualitatively different from other religions". Not just that it has flaws, but that those flaws are significantly worse than those of any other major religion. If your whole point is "Islam is worse than other religions", then what other religions do is in fact relevant.

That's my point, not necessarily that of the designers of the billboard. However every example that people give of "oh look, other religions do bad stuff too!" completely misses the point. The point isn't that people do bad stuff in the name of Islam. It's that they're following Mohammad's example when they do so.

Crimson847 wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army

Seriously? The LRA is a weird African cult with precious little connection to Christianity which makes no attempt to follow Christ's example. Central Africa is filled with such groups, but you don't find them popping up outside of Central Africa because they're not following Christ's example. You do find Salafist movements popping up all over the Islamic world, and can point to similar examples earlier in Islam's history with no connection. The problem is that such groups are following Mohammad's example. We could eradicate Salafism, have every Muslim country turn into a liberal democracy, and still risk having groups like ISIS pop up again.

@Lemon:
The problems inherent in Islam are not present in Hinduism. The thuggee cult, which is the most common example I see for Hinduism's answer to ISIS (hence why I brought it up), is in fact nothing like ISIS. Nothing you've said seems to contradict either of those points. And I use Christianity and Hinduism in contrast with Islam because they're the world's first and third largest religions. However if you'd rather I use a religion which actually has a founder, perhaps you can tell me where the Sikh ISIS is?
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:51 pm

...the khalistan movement has gotten one of our prime ministers killed.

Unless you mean they didn't create an anarchic region filled with executions, slavery and destruction of cultural artifacts, in which case that's pretty much just ISIS. But it's hardly a religious thing. They don't need mohammed to emulate, if it wasn't mohammed, they'd just pick a random sultan to emulate, or invent it themselves.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby cmsellers » Fri Jun 16, 2017 6:22 pm

The Khalistan movement is a nationalist movement, not a religious one. And if you read the forums, you'd know that I consider many Muslim terrorist groups (the Houthis and Badr Organization, for example) predominately nationalist rather than religions ones as well.

But ISIS is not unique. There's Al Shabab, Boko Haram, and the Taliban in the modern day, there's various Islamic purist groups and leaders throughout history.

A Combustible Lemon wrote:if it wasn't mohammed, they'd just pick a random sultan to emulate, or invent it themselves.

I can see them inventing it themselves, but then you'd expect it to be limited to one part of the world, like with the LRA. As for picking a random sultan to emulate, if that sort of thing happened, why aren't there modern-day Christians emulating the crusaders?
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:04 pm

But they already invented being ISIS if they invented it themselves, Boko Haram and the newest crop in the Philippines would, as they are doing right now, emulate ISIS. You're putting way more weight on the religious significance than is due.

I mean, you had a point somewhere in the beginning that the billboard writers were basically doing what the old not-replaceable-with-asshole definition of Troll was.
They're trying to get people to argue themselves into indefensible positions because people tend to be shit at argument and at substantiating their beliefs. Windy's done it here a thousand times. It's interesting because it's such a basic social response and has basically existed since the earliest days of the internet on the internet and probably goes back millennia. But it's interchangable with literally any other form of bait. They're baiting muslims into denying the truth because it'd put muslims at a social disadvantage, at which point the audience would vote against the hypocrites. That's not exactly 100% succeeding because a lot of peoples' response would be to immediately hate the troll. Which is how flamewars start.

But what does that point have to do with Muslims being the only people who can make up ISIS? ISIS doesn't need to be a historical emulation of anything. Random western ships in the middle of the ocean have turned to mob rule and cannibalism. They didn't need cannibal cultural ancestors to do it. Sentient people can emulate anything they know about.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby Learned Nand » Fri Jun 16, 2017 9:06 pm

cmsellers wrote:I don't expect individual Muslims to denounce Islamic terrorist attacks, but I do expect organizations like CAIR and the MCB to. If you claim to represent American or British Muslims and an American or British Muslim commits a terrorist attack, I'd say you have an obligation to say something about it.

For whatever problems I might have with CAIR, they have denounced extremism, repeatedly, despite being under no obligation to. After all, I don't hear you complaining that the NAACP fails to take a sufficiently hard stance against crime committed by black people.

I also think you are missing Lemon's point. If you think that Islam is somehow inherently worse as a religion, then it isn't enough to show that its extremists are different from extremists from other religions, but that they are actually worse (and furthermore, that that difference is due to something inherent in Islam). So pointing out, for example, that ISIS is attempting to emulate a past form of Islamic government whereas the thuggees are not doesn't further your point. That's a distinction without a difference.
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Re: Islam and "The Perfect Man"

Postby SandTea » Fri Jun 16, 2017 11:30 pm

cmsellers wrote:I've learned from TCS that right-thinking people are stubborn and no matter what I say I won't convince you that Islam qualitatively different from other religions, but I can't really fault people for trying.


Is "right-thinking" the new substitute for PC or SJW now or are you somehow saying you think their thoughts on this are correct but also incorrect? I'm genuinely confused.

Apart from that, I think I'll just say my opinion is pretty much in line with aviels. (Which I hope I'm not misrepresenting/misunderstanding) It would be quite the task for me to make the case that one religion is 'wronger' than another. That would be silly, pointless (almost like they are stubborn and won't be convinced!) and I hate quoting scripture.
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