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The problem I see is that pretty much everybody is unwilling to see religions other than their own (or religions in general) as anything less than uniform monol

The problem I see is that pretty much everybody is unwilling to see religions other than their own (or religions in general) as anything less than uniform monoliths, when in fact they are a bunch of vastly different denominations under one very vague umbrella. Just from my own perspective, I'm an Episcopalian; we were the first major Christian denomination to appoint an openly gay bishop, and our official policy is pro-LGBT and pro-same sex marriage. There are approximately two million of us, 1.8 million in the USA; we're not huge, but we're hardly a splinter group. Yet I've known both left-wing atheists and right-wing Baptists who first refuse to believe that I'm pro-LGBT, and then tell me that I'm not a "real" Christian, I'm a lone outlier with delusions of belonging. This despite the fact that more than 50% of all American Christians, of any denomination, describe themselves as pro-LGBT! I feel like the same thing applies to Muslims. There are groups, sects, denominations whose official policy is horrible, violent bigotry, and that should be resisted. But just knowing that a person is a Muslim doesn't tell you anything important about them.

MichaelGG 10y ago
You're sort of right, in the way that by the time you know an individual, you have lots of more information about that person and it should give you a better prediction of their behaviour than broad categories. But to suggest it provides zero info is wrong. By knowing someone lives in San Francisco, you can adjust your probability that someone votes Democrat, for instance. But with Islam, I see articles like this[1], which say "88% of Muslims in Egypt and 62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion". So it seems fair to say if you know someone is from there, and they are Muslim, then there's a high probability they have those kinds of views. At least, as far as we can go off this survey. Am I misinterpreting this incorrectly? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...

MichaelGG 10y ago

You're sort of right, in the way that by the time you know an individual, you have lots of more information about that person and it should give you a better prediction of their behaviour than broad categories. But to suggest it provides zero info is wrong. By knowing someone lives in San Francisco, you can adjust your probability that someone votes Democrat, for instance. But with Islam, I see articles like this[1], which say "88% of Muslims in Egypt and 62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion". So it seems fair to say if you know someone is from there, and they are Muslim, then there's a high probability they have those kinds of views. At least, as far as we can go off this survey. Am I misinterpreting this incorrectly? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...