[Manco]

Oh, I'm not arguing that that isn't a true Scotsmen fallacy, I'm just telling you what the book says.

So you acknowledge trying to paint one group as “true” Muslims is a bad argument? OK.

Yeah I'll give you that, what I should have said was "most Muslims in the middle east do not adapt it in that way". They just take it as it is, and I'm saying that as it is, it's a reprehensible piece of garbage.

I’ll admit that I don’t know much about how Islam is practiced and enforced in the Middle East, but I can accept that this is a more rational argument than you’ve previously been making. I don’t know if I’d agree with it, but it’s less antagonistic toward Muslims as a whole.

They are, but the ones doing all the worst shit are not doing that, they are, like I said, taking it at face value.

I’d argue that the worst offenders are specifically cherry-picking the text in a way to justify their violent and intolerant behavior, but I think we’re closer to the same page now on this.

It was a paraphrase, just as the one you quoted. You should've known that.

You want to argue semantics? You put quotation marks around it, implying it to be a direct quotation. And the quote I posted is an actual quotation from the New International Version, not a paraphrase.

That would be a good argument if only moral relativism didn't contradict with objective morals sent down by god. A practicing christian can't believe in moral relativism that stands in contradiction with the foundation of his religion.

Except most rational people will tell you that the Bible is highly unlikely to be composed entirely of the word of God, but was in fact written by a number of different authors over a long period of time, mostly long after the events described supposedly took place. And those authors lived at a time of poor record-keeping, in a society with a number of views modern moral teachings would consider outdated, and had specific views of their own which they likely would have inserted into the religious text they were writing. Which is the entire reason why there are people coming up with alternate interpretations of those texts.

If you make a statement about a kidnapper, do you automatically make statements about people kidnapped by the person?

That is an absurd comparison because people who are kidnapped have nothing to do with their kidnapper except that they were taken hostage by force.

And my point was that the book itself is full of disgusting ideas. People can interpret them how they want to, but it's pretty clear that they are bad ideas.

Which is why alternate interpretation exists.