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In reply to the discussion: Saying Islam has nothing to do with the Paris attacks... [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)You're essentially making an argument from a religious point of view here. There's a direct tension between implying that religious dogma is part of an immutable belief system invented by people that must be held accountable for being wrong, and discounting the possibility of people making it into something better.
Christianity and Judaism have most of the horrendous tenets of Islam -- they're just not generally followed. Likewise, Islam has plenty of heart-warming, intellectually reasonable tenets that are morally sound.
Cutting out the bad parts IS how religion works, because people in fact invent religion. The Bible says Saturday is the Sabbath, but Christians go to church on Sunday. It says sacrificing bulls and stoning unchaste women pleases God, but no one really does that these days.
We could toss all of the bad religious dogma into a fire today, and tomorrow some people would still wake up and be racists or homophobes or misognyists.
The "privilege" you speak of is cultural. Dick Cheney and his friends declared "American Exceptionalism" justifies sending the U.S. military all over the globe to protect business interests by force, human lives be damned. They didn't need ancient prophecies to do so, and it didn't take religious fervor for a lot of people to support it.
Religion is a framework. It exacerbates and oversimplifies, because it comes from a different time. Without it we still have dogma, and rhetoric and prejudice and hatred and greed and violence.
Within it, people can still decide to reject those things and do better. We have a much better chance of convincing people to follow the better tenets of their religions than in trying to fight religion, or a religion altogether.