This already makes the comparison unfair… But issue #02 why Indonesia? Like, why that country? Is it because I talked about Islam and Indonesia is a Muslim country so it qualifies for the comparison somehow… like if that’s the criteria I would say that Saudi Arabia is more worthy to choose for that comparison, especially since Saudis are fluent in Arabic, while Indonesians have their own language…

The region of the world does not change the text of the religion, which in turn should mean that the type of terrorist attacks committed by specific religions should be similar. This is the case when we look at the links between Indonesian Islamic terror orgs and other Islamic terror orgs. The reason I chose Indonesia was a population based comparison to show off an outlier in the United states. The united states despite being significantly less religious than Indonesia, a nation of comparable population has a comparable amount of terrorist attacks. In addition, why does the language of a religious text matter in the modern era? The Bible wasn’t written in English, but it certainly manages to be a part of lives of English speaking peoples.

#03 issue; the US is a Christian majority country, and if your intention was to prove that Islam doesn’t have that much influence over these attacks by picking an arbitrary Muslim country, which makes the number arbitrary… well if we’re comparing religion VS religion and not a Country VS Country, you should compare every Christian country to every Muslim country ( combined ) and even then the results wouldn’t mean anything… Christian fundamentalists commit more crimes than Muslim fundamentalists, how would that help solve religious extremism again? … Stats you’re asking for wouldn’t address the problems (wars, violence, hate speech… etc.) that are associated with religion… Because you’re looking in the wrong place, you want to understand a religion, look no further than it’s official books, look into the history of its founders, you’ll find your answers and more.

The claim to compare terrorist acts by religion does make sense, so I looked up some data - https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/global-terrorism-index/ which does seem to indicate the majority of violence in terms of number of people harmed does seem to stem from Islamist terror organizations. However, these actions seem to be heavily concentrated in specific regions with specific terror groups. For instance, half of all terrorist deaths happened in one region of sub Saharan Africa - Sahel. Additionally, in the West, politically motivated attacks overtook religious attacks, which declined by 82%. There were five times more political attacks than religious attacks. This is my point fundamentally - We cannot draw a direct line between terrorist attacks and religious people, leave alone between terrorist attacks and the text of specific religions.

However, as I mentioned earlier, I will contend that groupthink caused the lack of a functional truth seeking algorithm, and the lack of a robust meta-ethical foundation does play an important factor in religious terrorism specifically. Religion by definition has a requirement of trusting claims without evidence, and is therefore strongly associated with groupthink, which also requires blind trust.

sorry for the wall of text… Happy new year

Beehaw is a leftist space, and leftists are known for their essays lol, as I have just demonstrated myself. Additionally, I think I’ve spoken my piece here, so I probably will not reply further, as it does take significant time to read and respond with evidence, to claims made without evidence.

If I understand your argument, it is as follows, “Certain religious entities are responsible for the worst terrorist attacks and crimes against humanity in the modern era. Therefore, the content of the religious teachings of those religions must be responsible for the motivation to commit said attacks.”

If this is the case, then if I were to provide one of two counter examples, the burden of proof now comes back to you.

1. Counter-example 1 - Take a religion well known for its fundamentally peaceful texts, and see how it can still be twisted to commit terrorism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo)
2. Counter-example 2 - Take a region with principally members of Religion A, see how many terrorist incidents were committed in said region(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_Indonesia), compare it with another region of similar population with principally members of Religion B(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States)

In the end, the actual texts of religions does not matter, people will use the text to justify whatever nonsense they already believe. If people actually believed in even an ounce of their religious texts, capitalist Christians and violent Hindutva groups could not exist.

Come on folks, everybody knows correlation does not equal cruiseaction.

Y’all, I was witness to a weird crashing of the old guard and new guard of governance. I was in the process of passport renewal in my country, and this has two stages. Stage 1 is where you submit your proof of address and proof of birth documents physically, and stage 2 is when the police come to your residence to verify your address, as well as redo the document verification. Now, one might think that this process is a little redundant isn’t it? If you have to submit your documents physically, why are the cops verifying it again? And you would be right, but it gets even more stupid than this.

So, I go to the passport office for Stage 1, and I swear to god, I have never seen a government organization move so quickly. There are three sub-stages within stage 1, and each stage took not more than 5 minutes. Everything was digitized, and in case you missed your token number appearing on the numerous screens, people will call out your name specifically and direct you to the specific counter you need to go to. All the while, you wait in an air-conditioned room with a refreshment shop as well.

In contrast to the absolute dream that was stage 1, the police first refused to come to my home, made me go to the police station, and then proceeded to do the friendly interrogation thing for 15 minutes. Now, if you’re not familiar with this method, the idea is to ask pointed questions and delve into the most minor details, but never in an accusing fashion, the intent being to make you uncomfortable enough to pay for things to be smoothed over. Hell, I was even micro-aggressively fat shamed. Luckily for me, my father used to work high up in governance so the cop was a little placated, but in the end he would not let me go until I paid a “service charge”.

Wild stuff, folks. Take care out there.

As a Tamil upper caste dude, the amount of blind hatred I see for religious minorities(Principally the Islamic community), is astounding. The justification provided for such rhetoric is heavily fascistic. Some of the rhetoric highlighted here is positively Strasserite. There is no justification based on facts for “Love Jihad” or “Anti-national” activities, nor is there any rational explanation for the discrimination faced by religious minorities, specifically Muslims. Side note, if you’re ever on a certain website with an alien mascot, never set your default country to India, unless you want to see a potent dose of fascist, majoritarian rhetoric.

With this said, as an atheist by virtue of my epistemology, I see harmful behavior across religions, enforced by the thought leaders of said religions. In my mind, this is simply a consequence of majoritarian default-ist attitudes. This is principally evidenced by the treatment of queer and neuro-atypical communities across the world, by members of all religions, despite what the explicit text of their religious books may or may not say. In the end, even if some religions support minority rights, they do so with the same epistemological incorrectness that is present in those members that discriminate against minorities.

In my mind, it then becomes necessary to teach not only the outcomes of science, but the process of and epistemological justification for the scientific method as well. However, as the systems of public education are in the hands of a state run by fascists and ineffective liberals, I highly doubt this will change any time soon.