Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dr Harford 
But Mohammad was the last profit, and no one will ever be empowered to rewrite the Koran. It's the fundamental tenant of islam. There is no god but god and Mohammad (an ancient desert warlord and charlatan) was his last profit. The Koran does not empower people to ignore even one line. That is the problem with these ancient tribal "holy books": they bill themselves as the first and last word on god and religion. Their content that "isn't up to code" can never be fully erased or papered over. The only answer is for people to say "I love my family and cultural traditions, but the religion itself has no place in the modern world". You can't excise the cancer from Islam, because its built in from the ground up. To pretend that these are religions of peace requires massive intellectual contortions and willful distortions of the fact. You can choose to follow a more peaceful Islam but it won't be Isalm as tought by the Koran.
And just to be clear, I feel exactly the same way about Christianity and I worry about the content of the bible. I think if people ever fell on hard times, and there was a break down of civilization, Christianity would pose a huge danger to order and the rule of law.
Jesus.
First of all, it's PROPHET, not "profit." The man was God's emissary on Earth, not the excess of revenues after expenses.
I'm as atheist as they come, but your view on religion is completely misguided and entirely misinformed. There are millions upon millions of secular Muslims who practice their religion without, for instance, having to cut off the hand of the thief who steals from them. Millions upon millions of Christians and Jews are able to live modern lives despite being believers. Despite the fact that I think religion is nonsense, religion can have a place in modern society, even if it's based on "ancient tribal holy books."
The current problems in the Muslim world have more to do with post-colonialism and American neo-imperialism than they have to do with religion. I agree that Islam needs to, for lack of a better phrase, grow up a little bit, but you have to understand that these are nations lacking a strong civil society where dissent is accepted and normalized, in large part because the West has squashed previous efforts at democracy for the sake of expediency in trade and foreign relations (cheap and secure oil, Israel). Catholicism went through a particularly brutal phase, but it grew out of it (let's put aside child molestation, an affliction of which it hasn't grown out of). Islam will do the same, and the Arab spring will move that forward in large part because the seeds of open societies will begin to germinate.
But your prescription of the problem with religion is incredibly offensive, not to mention ignorant and stereotyped.
ETA: removed "baseless" because, at bottom, you sort of have a point about holy books being exceedingly violent, but that's because those books are a product of their time.
Also, you do know that the Koran specifically forbids Muslims from killing Jews and Christians, because they are people "of the book," right?
