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Comment Re:Where's the... (Score 1) 507

Is personal responsibility compatible with atheism?

Book recommendation: Freedom Evolves by Dan Dennett.

Dennett argues that the the kinds of free will worth wanting (especially those needed for moral responsibility) are compatible with a deterministic universe. (Determinism doesn't necessarily follow from atheism, but it quite often does, and since Dennett is an atheist and a compatibilist, he argues from that perspective.)

Comment Re:wow (Score 1) 844

I understood the point of your original reply to mean "moderates of other groups behave the same way too." When I pointed out the extremist position of Islam (and implied that it is quite different as things stand today), you then implicitly accused me of a straw man.

The moderate reaction is unavoidably related to the extremist reaction when that extremist reaction represents a significant percentage of the group. When mobs march the streets, embassies get torched, and people beheaded for expressing an opinion and the moderate reaction is "you should not have offended our Prophet," it is a tacit approval of the extremist reaction.

When someone insults the Pope and the fundamentalists by and large do little more than thump their chests and yell a lot, a moderate reaction of "you should not have offended our Pope" sends a much different message in this context.

Comment Re:wow (Score 5, Interesting) 844

The parent's post might be worded rather harshly and somewhat unfairly, but the general point is valid.

During the Danish cartoon incident, I was quite surprised that the primary reaction of moderate Islam wasn't condemning the violence of their fellow Muslims, but rather insisting that the cartoonist should not have insulted their prophet.

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