how many christians support abortion clinic bombings, capital punishment, border fences, forced conversion of homosexuals...

you think it's less than 8%, bill? really?

so, which is it then: are americans stupid or not?

this is the point that maher gets wrong over and over and over again. there's not a liberal on the planet that "supports islam". we just won't stand for giving christians a free pass, or setting up an us-vs-them double standard. that is what is bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OsQRI-LBU

also, fwiw, syria was a secularist quasi-stalinist state up until a few years ago, and would like to return to that. that's the whole russia-syria thing. they were a proxy. like north korea...

you were more likely to get persecuted for being religious than not being religious. that's why these guys hate assad so much, and why they hate the population so much. it's why the population is fleeing slaughter. that's what's happening: religious extremists are slaughtering functional atheists.

the reality is that whether they identify as christian or muslim or something else, the vast majority of these refugees are actually not religious at all - because syria is not a religious society.
i have another point as well about the honour killings. i could go on about this for a while, but i'll spare you; if you break it down carefully, you need to ask yourself if accepting capital punishment for one type of crime is really different than accepting capital punishment for another type of crime on a concept-of-justice level or if it reflects a different set of ideas about what criminality is. i mean, we can certainly agree that we can find some problems with american executions if we look carefully, can't we? there is a difference - i'm not saying there isn't. but the difference is what is determined to be worthy of a death sentence, not the act of carrying the death sentence out. or at least it is relative to the united states. we don't do that up here.

but, for the honour killings specifically...

it is true that murdering your partner is legal in much of the islamic world if you catch them in the act of adultery red-handed, and at the time of catching them. i apologize for the language, but it's necessary in context. so, because that is legal, you would expect responses on surveys that reflect that it is legal.

i of course disagree with that law. but, i also disagree with capital punishment laws in the united states. there's a difference. but, i went through that.

it is not legal here, so we would expect survey responses to reflect that, as well. but it is also perhaps worth pointing out that it did used to be legal here, too. this is a recently won battle.

but, certainly we all know that this is something that happens here with a relatively high level of frequency. "crimes of passion" are statistically one of the most frequent types of violent crimes. we should readily agree that white men, christian or not, kill their girlfriends or wives for cheating on them all the time - often not caught red-handed, and a good deal of time after the fact.

so, putting the legalities and social conventions aside, it would be interesting to ask the question of how frequently these honour killings occur across countries, and if there is any statistical reason to think they actually happen in greater frequencies in islamic countries.

i'll be blunt: i think you'll find that they do not. i think you'll find that white christian men kill their partners for cheating at a higher frequency than islamic men do.

and, we can talk about reasons for this. it may actually have something to do with the religion - which is the wrong reason, but perhaps true nonetheless.

but, i think i'd really like to see this question of empirical fact established. i'm taking a lot of guesses, sure. but, i do think my hunch is likely correct.