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Comment by noahth | Hacker News Reader

As a fan of Fisher, it's interesting to read an open-minded review of his work from someone on the right. But the bit about Islam can't be left unchallenged. The reviewer says:

>>> I would not claim that Islam is monolithically malign, of course, but someone less constrained by their unconscious sense of ideological appropriateness would ask why interpretations of the faith lead people towards evangelistic violence and puritanical tyranny so much more than interpretations of other faiths.

But here in America we still have Christians practicing evangelistic violence and working to enforce puritanical tyranny. There's nothing unique about Islam in this regard, unfortunately. Like nearly any religion, it can be mustered to support incredible love or horrific cruelty.

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You are right that any philosophy can be distorted and made horrific. It’s kind of like how even lots of water can be poisonous if drank in sufficient quantities.

It’s hard for me to bring up a topic like this without being lumped into straw man town of equating “some religions tend to have more violently dangerous people, as data like the pew opinions show” with “some religions are universally bad and racism is ok.”

I think an understanding of my first quote is important while my second quote is not worth, to me, discussing because racism is really harmful.

That being said, while the kkk is very real and caused massive historical violence and even today has a non-zero level of threat. The evalgelistic Christians are about as dangerous, in terms of violence, as followers of Eris working to further the Eschaton.

Other philosophies and religions are currently more dangerous and we need to engage with, learn about, and support constructive ways to change minds so apostasy stops being a capital offense in our world.

https://www.salon.com/2013/08/03/the_10_worst_examples_of_ch...

https://www.splcenter.org/20180723/terror-right

Aside from those sources aren’t really reputable, that’s why I said that the right threat is non-zero. It does exist, it’s just less than other threats.

OKC was 1995. It makes me feel old but that’s 25 years ago. I would worry more if Montana had turned into an ISIS-like dystopian recruiting all these dumbasses to gather from around the world to make a super Pope or something.

That's the first time I've heard SPL isn't reputable. Anyway, it's not an opinion piece, it's just a list of violent events. If you find one that's not true, please say so.

The article is a record of right-wing violence, which are due to strains of white supremacy (often Christian supremacy as well), going up to 2019. So Islam is far from exceptional when it comes to ideologies prone to violence.

You're not one of those people who dismiss everything that disagrees with them as "fake news", are you?

So if Islam is not the only ideology that can turn violent, then why do people like to focus on it so much and act like it's the number one threat to the world that's flying under our radar? And people ignore the fact that US activity in Muslim countries has been so barbaric, which is obviously going to make people angry.

This is why people talk about Islamophobia, because the fixation goes beyond logic.

The idea that evangelical Christians are about as dangerous as the "followers of Eris" seems like quite a stretch. I don't see Discordians bombing abortion clinics.

Even as recently as the 80s, when The Last Tempation of Jesus Christ was released, it was banned in several countries (and is still banned in several) for its "blasphemous" content. The producers were worried that people would bomb theaters. The idea that Islam is uniquely censorious or intolerant of "blasphemy" is ahistorical, in my opinion.

I think a big difference between Christianity and Islam is that in the west Christianity has been around (or at least more dominant) much longer. I think this has two effects:

1. People are more used to it, and likely less aware of the flaws it has (or might have, as this is in the eye of the beholder). This may lead to people to make claim X, Y, Z about Islam, forgetting that this may have applied in the past (or still does) to Christianity as well

2. It had more time to develop according to the "western ways" so to speak.

Of course this will vary per country, and the US is big enough that it probably even varies per state. The Netherlands for example doesn't really have anything close to for example the Westboro Baptist Church, at least not that I know of and is anywhere near as widely known.

2. Is a complete inversion of history. “Western ways” were derived from Christian values, not the other way around. The value of charity, the importance of justice, care for the poor, days of rest and of work, the value of children—all of these are not things the West valued or understood in the same way prior to Christianity. The concept of “the West” is inextricable from Christian values and the evolutions of the reading and interpretation of its texts.

those are inherent human values. maybe christianity rescued them for some people, maybe they just appropriated them. but christianity is not the source of compassion, nor love for children..

It's not so much that Christianity is the source of justice, hard work, and loving children as that Christianity claims to be the source of these things.

And, since Christianity is inextricable from European imperialism, those "values" were used to claim moral superiority to other cultures, in order to justify the pillage. Because other cultures clearly don't care about justice or work or children, right? Right.

Your inversion can itself be inverted. The success of Christianity is arguably derived from European political power - first the Romans, and then the colonialist explosion across the globe that started with Spain in the New World (closely followed by England, Holland, and France), which was a result of technological advantages, not moral ones. Without colonialism, Christianity would be merely an also-ran religion confined to a European backwater.

   we still have Christians practicing 
   evangelistic violence

Did you not notice the terms "so much more"?

That sounds like a quantitative argument, not a qualitative one. Can I invite you to reflect on how to refute/confirm quantitative arguments, and then to consult the quantitative distribution of violence, in, say, the last 100 years, of Christians, Bahais, Shiks, Bhuddists, or Zoroastrians and Islam.

Since this account appears to be using HN exclusively for ideological battle, we've banned it. That's not what this site is for, as the guidelines explain:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. Primarily that means doing what serves intellectual curiosity, rather than what destroys it.

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