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tater · 08-02-10, 08:55 PM

Without going so far as to fall into a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, people who hold certain beliefs cannot really belong to certain groups, regardless of self-identification. I'd posit that Christians are not those who claim to be Christian, but those that meet some basic standard of at least trying to behave as a Christian. Ditto for Muslims, a good faith effort to follow the koran as written is required. Obviously, if the definition is "being born to Muslim parents" then we run into the logical fallacy. Since religions are nothing more than a voluntarily held set of beliefs, I think that membership should in fact be defined as holding those beliefs true.

I, for example, am technically a Catholic. I'm Confirmed in the church, etc. I'm an atheist(even anti-theist)/agnostic(have to be agnostic on deism, can't know one way or another).

If I lived someplace so intolerant that I had to hide my atheism, I'd claim to be a Catholic, but not follow all the rules (not follow any I could get away with not following). I in fact did this as a kid (I became an atheist in maybe 5th-6th grade or so).

So yeah, there are Muslims who don't follow it closely, and they're great. The less they follow their doctrine, in fact, the better they are.

It's interesting that the most tolerant muslims (meaning populations in general) are in places where they don't understand Arabic. The more people are taught Arabic (to be able to read the koran), the less tolerant they become (which is the point of teaching Arabic to Muslims outside the ME). Remember, only ~200 million understand Arabic worldwide, and there are 1.2 BILLION Muslims. That means the vast majority cannot even read their own holy book.

08-02-10, 08:55 PM	#6
tater Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: New Mexico, USA Posts: 9,023 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 2	Without going so far as to fall into a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, people who hold certain beliefs cannot really belong to certain groups, regardless of self-identification. I'd posit that Christians are not those who claim to be Christian, but those that meet some basic standard of at least trying to behave as a Christian. Ditto for Muslims, a good faith effort to follow the koran as written is required. Obviously, if the definition is "being born to Muslim parents" then we run into the logical fallacy. Since religions are nothing more than a voluntarily held set of beliefs, I think that membership should in fact be defined as holding those beliefs true. I, for example, am technically a Catholic. I'm Confirmed in the church, etc. I'm an atheist(even anti-theist)/agnostic(have to be agnostic on deism, can't know one way or another). If I lived someplace so intolerant that I had to hide my atheism, I'd claim to be a Catholic, but not follow all the rules (not follow any I could get away with not following). I in fact did this as a kid (I became an atheist in maybe 5th-6th grade or so). So yeah, there are Muslims who don't follow it closely, and they're great. The less they follow their doctrine, in fact, the better they are. It's interesting that the most tolerant muslims (meaning populations in general) are in places where they don't understand Arabic. The more people are taught Arabic (to be able to read the koran), the less tolerant they become (which is the point of teaching Arabic to Muslims outside the ME). Remember, only ~200 million understand Arabic worldwide, and there are 1.2 BILLION Muslims. That means the vast majority cannot even read their own holy book.