I don't think the rest of us (most or all) really feel badly towards him in the sense of any ill will. I think what you see happening with the more harshly worded criticisms etc. (including from me!) is that we are trying to get him to come to the point, i.e. trying to push him a bit towards facing up to honestly answering certain questions that get direct to the heart of his beliefs and his claims from the Koran ...
For some years I was a moderator at a now defunct forum for atheists, and have a lot of experience debating believers there. I have never seen any of them facing up to anything. The most you can hope for is that they leave the thread without comment. Muslims tended to be somewhat more ridiculous in their claims, which is probably because they often lived in a bubble where their views were never challenged. Christians have issues with schools and society that constantly challenge their tenets.
... it may be true that we have not made a great deal of progress considering how long this thread has been running, but the alternative is probably to just let heydarian (or anyone preaching their religion as fervently and as abundantly as he's been doing) dominate the entire thing by a huge mass of preaching from the Koran and about the Koran (i.e. claims of scientific miraculous revelation) without opposition from people here explaining why his beliefs cannot be believed as true.
Heydarian’s attempts to shoe-horn science into an old nomadic text is of course a joke, but our attempts to fix his attention to this is watered out by our own Gish Gallop by people who want to probe his views on lots of things, most of them religious, and far from his opening post. How did his laughable claims of science in the Quran transform into whether he would want to kill us? I think this development made it easier in his mind to ignore the scientific issues, and get on with the preaching.
And if we focus on (for example) accusations of "dishonesty", I think the point there is that in the end it really does come down to theists almost always being unwilling to think honestly for themselves about why they believe what they say about their faith, and on that simple basis simply not really being honest in the way they reply to what others here have said to them/him.
I agree. Heydarian is even more dishonest than most. I wonder if he is not actually aware of it himself.
E.g., you see that all the time on atheists/sceptic call-in shows like Atheist Experience, where almost literally every theist caller simply refuses to present an honest argument and similarly refuses to give honest replies to questions when asked why they believe there is good evidence to support their belief in miracles etc.
I have never heard of such a show. Sounds fun - the first time, anyway.
As for religious people presenting a danger to others (and to themselves), unfortunately I do think that all religious people are potentially dangerous as a result of their faith beliefs.
I disagree completely. People here are probably right that heydarian is a fanatic, but he does avoid every aspect of bloodshed - as does the huge majority of Christian fanatics who never become murderous.
On the other hand, the Quran is famous for exhorting the believers to lie to unbelievers, so he may well present a more benign side to us.
The reason is simple (and I think obvious), namely – there is actually no solid insurmountable barrier separating someone who at one time appears to everyone to be just a pretty laid-back Christian or Muslim with no dangerous thoughts/ideas/behaviour, and someone who very quickly then turns into what would widely be called a dangerous extremist … that distinction or separation is extremely fluid and a very easy line to cross. For example, if you look at all the major cases of Islamic terrorism in the UK (i.e. where many people have been murdered and where people have been imprisoned for life), in many if not almost all of the cases the Muslim attackers changed from being almost entirely benign and not especially devout, to quite suddenly becoming lethal extremist religious fanatics in a period of just a matter of months.
This logic leads to condemnation of all Muslims no matter what their view is because everyone can change their mind and become murderers. The fact that this happens for a vanishing fraction of Muslims can in my opinion not damn the vast majority. A single terrorist can of course cause terrible slaughter, and that leads to the fear that every Muslims could do the same.
So in short, sadly I do think all religious belief can quite easily become very dangerous indeed (it's also anti educational of course, and highly divisive within society and within families etc. … so there's that sort of “danger” as well). Which is why I think we do need to oppose it wherever possible.
On of my friends is in fact a fanatic Muslim in the same sense as heydarian, but he is not living up to Islamic standards in any other way. He is clean-shaven, and also has the belief that Islam is a religion of peace, in the same vein that most Christians think that peace is a particular condition invented by Christ. Like heydarian he also believes that the Quran is in complete accordance with modern science, but unlike heydarian he makes no attempt to convert anybody. He can’t understand the Danes (who are atheists in varying degrees), but he thinks that I am misreading the Quran if quote something that makes him uncomfortable. He thinks that I am cherry picking, and that reading the Quran or the Bible also is dependent on having the right view from the start. He is probably right about this.
When a Muslim terrorist attack happens somewhere, he takes at as a personal attack on himself, and thinks that the terrorist have no idea of what the Quran tries to tell us. I refuse to believe that he will ever become a terrorist.
P.S. I often wonder if heydarian is able to follow the debate in any meaningful way. His reliance on Google Translate surely makes him miss most points, and he certainly has no idea why we often speak of cherry picking in a non-agricultural connection. This could also explain why he ignores most arguments.
