re: #15 Desmond

One place where you’ve gone wrong is to try and compare a person from culture X to American culture.

While those polls certainly indicate that those who self-identify as “Muslim” at those locations choose a harsher punishment than some Americans would choose, you have not measured what the non-Muslims in those locations also believe.

For example, in Russia today the Orthodox Russian Church takes some pretty hard line stances on certain issues compared to, say, your local Methodist church out here in SoCal would take on the same issue. Both will claim to be “Christian”, but the culture of the Russian Orthodox leaders in Russia today and the average Southern Californian is different.

I am very critical of all of these Iron Age religions - Judaism, Christianity, an Islam - and the latter two are riffs on the former and all of them have folded in so many primitive practices that I still feel that we collectively would be better if our societies moved away from literal beliefs in these religions.

Perhaps the blowback against the Muslim haters has clouded the larger discussion about ancient religions not fitting into a modern world, but unfortunately people like Maher are not making the issue any clearer. Maher like all shout-media makes money by throwing the largest temper-tantrum possible, simply to get eyes-on-product.