Hubble measured light from pulsing stars in distant galaxies, not the CMB. The pulsing stars are of the "Cepheid" class, which have the characteristic of their pulse duration correlating with their luminosity. This provided a "standard candle" for Hubble to know the distance of the star.

By "classical astrophysics" I meant astrophysics which doesn't use quantum mechanics or general relativity.

The issue is that there is motion of objects which cannot be comprehended by GR...

How can we even begin to measure these motions when our only means for measuring them, GR, views them as contrary motions, i.e. contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

We measure these motions with classical astrophysics, not GR. We describe and predict what we measure with "spatial expansion", which GR endorses. The expansion itself isn't contradictory if you're speaking in terms of transposing the expansion into direction and velocity.

It's not like everything is moving away from one single point, like an explosion, as "big bang" implies, it's the case that everything is moving away from every point. So the big bang is way off track, because there must be a big bang at every point in space, to account for the observation that everything is moving away from every point in space. — Metaphysician Undercover

The thing about the big bang is that it involved every point in observable space. We don't know whether or not what lies beyond the observable universe (the stuff so far away that light cannot reach us due to spatial expansion) simply goes on forever or actually has an edge. If there is indeed an edge and we are in a finite but expanding universe, then the big bang model makes sense: the universe was very tiny, then expanded to be very big. All the points in the expanded universe were contained (if only in some other form) within "the big bang", and spatial expansion produces no contradictions.

If the universe actually goes on forever, then there's still no problem with spatial expansion occurring everywhere (more space should not be a problem for infinite space), but "center of the universe" or "point where the big bang happened" becomes incoherent. If "infinite spatial points" exist, then they either always existed or were created all at once.

This possibility might seem like it contradicts the big bang, but it doesn't. When we say that the current universe is 92 billion light years across, we're referring to the range in which things are possibly observable (any farther than that and light won't reach us due to spatial expansion) which scientists call the "observable universe". When we say right after the big bang these 92 billion light years worth of points in space were all scrunched into the size of an atom, we're only talking about the stuff within our observable range, not the global universe. If there's infinite space out there, it doesn't matter how tiny you scrunch; the universe would still be infinitely big.

The big bang still makes sense in this scenario. 13.75 billion years might not mean the beginning of everything, but it does still mean the beginning of everything observable.

The information received by Hubble is interpreted with the use of GR. — Metaphysician Undercover

The conclusion of Hubble gets interpreted by GR, not the information he gathered. Hubble demonstrated that the universe is expanding, somehow, someway (or that we are the center of it).

GR then came along and proposed a kind of mechanism of how. "Space itself is expanding" is what GR said. That the universe is expanding was already all but undeniable from Hubble's classical astronomical observations.

To restate, we observe that we live in an expanding universe, which is uncanny. "Spatial expansion" makes partial sense of this uncanny observation by at least giving us a way to describe and chart it.

OK, so this is what I mean when I say expansion is unintelligible. Imagine a point in space. Then imagine a point some distance to the right, and a point the same distance to the left, and points above, and below, etc.. Everything is moving away from each of these points. How would you reconcile such different motions? Clearly relativity theory is incapable of reconciling such radically different motions, which are actually the same objects observed from different perspectives. — Metaphysician Undercover

Spatial expansion is the only thing we can come up with that reconciles and predicts these seemingly contrary motions that we observe. We can only reconcile our observations by proposing that the space in-between sufficiently distant objects expands and push/pulls us apart. The fact that GR infers spatial expansion and that we observe it is points for GR, not a mark against it.

This would allow us to deal with the vast quantity of evidence, that there is non-spatial activity which occurs, in a coherent and intelligible way. — Metaphysician Undercover

I propose that events occurring on sufficiently small scales are indistinguishable from "non-dimensional events". GR breaks-down at quantum scales, it's true, but to an extent that doesn't matter as long as what GR says about Newtonian scales remains true. It's true for Newtonian/macro scales.

One day we might come up with a theory of quantum gravity and unite QM with GR in a way that enhances our predictive power in both the quantum and macroscopic scales of matter, but it is unlikely that such an advancement would overturn much of what we already know thanks to GR given that it has very well established and very powerful predictive power.

If what we think we know does hold true, non-dimensional phenomenon only become an issue if we try to actually talk about the "singularity" itself. Counter-intuitively, big bang cosmology is entirely concerned with what came after the big bang, not what came before, and not what it was; only what came after.

It might be true that the singularity that caused the big bang was an entire universe of it's own, with it's own history and developmental progression, but when we say that the "universe" is 13.75 billion years old, we mean the observable universe; our universe. There might be other universe,more things that exist outside of our universe, but we don't have any way to access them, so we're forced to only talk about what what we do have access to. Some things are beyond the horizon of what can be interacted with and therefore known.

Well said, but to complete the logical tetrad, who would the open-minded non-compassionate be? — Baden

I guess in a way that's what I attempted to be in this thread. Open minded and dispassionate (unbiased?).

To my far right I see a growing cloud of passion and anger that throws political positions on Islam far out of proportion and reality (this thread is primarily aimed at challenging that far out position). To my immediate left and right (I think) I see understanding tempered with reason, and to my far left I see nuance, accuracy, and correctness being shelved in the name of political correctness. One extreme maintains complete and total condemnation of Islam while the other maintains complete and total endorsement of it; two moral extremes, both of which are poorly founded and narrow-minded.

The condemn extreme is growing of late, hence the impetus for the thread, and given that this far right has already angrily driven compassion out of town, a dispassionate approach might be the only thing that can possibly diffuse it. Occasionally I deal with the far left when and where I find issue, but close-minded compassion is not only more rare than close-minded hatred, it's also much less a cause for worry.

I must say though that I'm surprised and impressed by most of the responses to this thread, it shows that these polar extremes aren't inhabited much at all around here, the regressive left least so.

Although the OP isn't about the relationship between 'the Left' and Islam, that alleged relationship has featured strongly in the discussion, and articles with titles like 'The Left has an Islam problem' have been frequently cited. Really those articles should be entitled 'the Compassionate and Open-minded have an Islam problem', in order to capture Angela Merkel and people like her on the 'Right' within the scope of their disdain — andrewk

It might have been too much to cram in to the OP, but there is a noteworthy dynamic in the discussion of Islam that involves some proponents of the self described far left, but it's somewhat difficult to precisely describe...

We know the kind of tomfoolery that results from having no compassion and also being close-minded, and also what results from the angelic inverse, but what do you get when someone is both close-minded and highly compassionate?

Basically you get someone who will actually defend all manner of abhorrent actions citing respect for culture (and in this case) while denying any possible moral rebuke of harmful religious/cultural beliefs and practices. And by insulating everyone and everything from all criticism, they also insulate the groups they seek to protect from reform. Labeled pejoratively as "regressives" by their peers (on the basis of endorsing moral regression as opposed to progression) this vocal group provides the fodder for the perception that the left has an Islam problem (For anyone who may not know, the perceived problem is that the left is unable to discuss Islam objectively due to bias, fear of being racist, etc...).

This group represents a very, very small slice of the public (18-25 students form it's core demographic), but they are tech savvy and the emotional insulation that is inherent in their position makes them very advertiser friendly, which gives them undue presence in mainstream culture. People reacting severely to the left's problem with Islam are reacting to this very thin but loud group. They go on to equate anything which detracts from their full and scathing condemnation of Islam as a whole with full blown cultural relativism. The vigor of their reaction causes even more of a reaction from the regressives, which in turn refuels the cycle.

It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop and both parties get something out of it. The close-minded/non-compassionate get politically correct airheads to make fun of and be angry at, and the airheads get an emulation of the kind of hateful opposition that validates their position. Compassion itself might be a trait we can associate with the left, which could explain why more right wing pundits please their audiences with hate, but "open-mindedness" unfortunately doesn't come included with any ideology. It's not that philosophically interesting, but these are the sad roots of the portrayal of the left's Islam problem.

The observational evidence for an expanding universe doesn't rely on GR though.

Hubble measured and demonstrated the positive correlation between the distance of deep space objects and the speed which they are all traveling away from us (a positive correlation). This means that either we are at the center of a central point of expansion of matter (hence everything is heading away from us) or everything is moving away from everything else (it's all spreading out via some kind of metric expansion). If we were at or near a central point of expansion, then it stands to reason that there would be some sort of pattern in the distribution of matter, but the distribution of matter at the largest observable scale has no such detectable pattern or form, and we would be very lucky indeed if we truly were the center of the universe.

Spatial expansion describes an observed phenomenon, and while general relativity provides real theoretical and mathematical claws to the credulity of the phenomenon, the observational data that it predicts is why science has accepted it.

The legs of your disagreement are that A) General relativity leads to spatial expansion, which is "nonsense", and B) An unexplained objection about the real relationship between gravity and time which GR fails to describe...

I know that your distaste for the concept of spatial expansion doesn't negate it's validity, so what about general relativity is really so inadequate? In light of all the predictive power it lends us, what evidence do you have to suggest that it is somehow false?

I believe that gravity is incorporated into the space-time metric, it is a property of space time. So if there is a part of space, at a great distance between objects for example, in which there is no gravity, then general relativity does not apply here, there are no objects moving in relation to each other, they are too far away. Yet there is still activity of space relative to time here, what is known as spatial expansion. So general relativity gives us an inaccurate representation of the relationship between space and time. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are some gravitational forces everywhere. The gravitational field generated by a given mass extends infinitely, it just gets weaker the farther and farther away another mass gets from it. The gravitational forces generated by our local galactic group are stronger than spatial expansion up to a certain distance away, and so it keeps us clustered together (gravity holds back everything being pulled apart).

Actually, what I am arguing is that your starting point, general relativity, is faulty, and that is why your finish point, the big bang is faulty. So I believe that the entire described scenario is deficient. Look, general relativity cannot account for the activity which is known as spatial expansion, scientists do not know what this is. There are no principles to explain it. So your entire described scenario is just unprincipled speculation. The problem is, that when cosmologist come across a problem, something which makes no sense, or appears to be unintelligible, then instead of recognizing the most likely cause of this problem, that the general theory of relativity is inadequate, and this inadequacy is causing the problem, they'll just invent some new fiction, like dark matter, to account for the problem. Instead of accepting the most probable reason for the problem, that they do not have an accurate model of the relationship between space and time, as general relativity is unreliable, they'll assume the existence of something like dark matter, which has no evidence for its existence, other than that there is something which the theory cannot account for. So the only evidence of its existence is the fact that assuming its existence makes the theory work. — Metaphysician Undercover

"So the only evidence of its existence is the fact that assuming its existence makes the theory work."

We observe gravity (a relationship), and we make theories that describe this relationship. This allows us to predict what effects gravity will have, but it doesn't explain what it is or why it exists. We assume the existence of an invisible force (and describe it mathematically) in order to make the theory of gravity work. And it works.

When it comes to general relativity, Einstein somehow observed (even if hypothetically) spacetime and then set about describing it mathematically. And it works. Without general relativity, we wouldn't be able to get a GPS to work, we wouldn't be able to understand why orbits can slowly deviate and decay in certain ways, and we would have no way to explain why when we send a clock up into orbit and then bring it back down we find it has run fast by a very large margin (which corresponds to the distance it was from the earths surface where it was calibrated and the amount of time it spent at that distance); time dilation is real.

When you say that all these uncanny principles are just invented to make theories work, you're right, but what it means for "a theory to work" is that it describes/predicts observational evidence. "Spatial expansion" isn't a problem, it's a working solution to a problem. Without it the observational evidence leads to great confusion.

When it comes to dark matter, as far as I understand the hypothesis, it's not used to explain spatial expansion (which follows from general relativity), it's used to explain why the metric spatial expansion is currently accelerating. Einstein originally thought he needed a cosmological constant (a force) in order to "hold back gravity" from collapsing a static model of the universe (he didn't know it was expanding at the time), and now it's making a comeback as we can now observe and measure the acceleration of this expansion. The force accelerating us is what they call dark matter. The observational evidence shows an acceleration in the expansion, and dark matter is more or less a placeholder theory to explain it, and the cosmological constant is the mathematical value we use to represent the force of the acceleration that we measure.

My claim is that the fact that the expansion of space, as recognized through general relativity, is not the same internal to an object as it is external to an object, indicates a failing of general relativity's expressed relationship between space and objects — Metaphysician Undercover

Objects on cosmologically small scales (our local galactic group and smaller) exist within a gravitational field strong enough to counteract metric spatial expansion. If I understand the science correctly, spatial expansion occurs everywhere, it's just counteracted by other physical forces (nuclear bonds/gravity) and therefore not at all measurable on small scales. It can only be experimentally observed using cosmologically large scale distances (millions of parsecs).

But we all know that objects themselves are made up off parts, and each of the parts might also be represented as an object. Why is it that the parts of an object were not closer together in the past? — Metaphysician Undercover

Go back far enough and they were. If we rewind time and observe where the material the earth is composed of goes, it gets dispersed into the molecular cloud that first gave birth to the sun and the solar system (which collapsed under it's own gravitational pull) about 5 billion years ago. If we look at the molecular cloud as a whole and start rewinding time, we see that some of the higher elements that provided the initial gravity bump required for our sun to form might have come from other stars and other galaxies that have already formed and since expired. As we continue rewinding time, the universe is shrinking and every distant mass is steadily getting closer and closer together. All the non primordial gas (the hydrogen that was already present) keeps getting sucked into stars, and those stars disperse into the molecular clouds that created them: everything is still slowly but steadily getting closer and closer together, and the background temperature is very slowly rising. Once we reach about 13.2 billion years back, we see every higher element in existence (non hydrogen/helium/lithium) get sucked into the first stars, and then dispersed into the primordial hydrogen, helium, and lithium clouds that originally created them.

Up to this point we're at about 13.65 billion years back in time, and the observable universe is about 42 million light years across (Woah! That's down from the 46 billion that it presently spans!). The Cosmic microwave background radiation starts heating up (from 60K to 4000K), heat distribution in matter becomes more homogeneous, and the "neutral atoms" that existed at this time start shedding their electrons (they become ions), until eventually everything becomes plasma. ((The light what was freed when these ions gained electrons as the universe expanded and cooled is what gave rise to the cosmic microwave background, and it paints a picture of the fluctuations in the distribution of matter at the time (where the CMB is stronger, more hydrogen ions were binding with free electrons). This distribution reflects some fluctuation/non-homogeneous feature in what came before, and the distribution of larger structure which emerged afterward.))

As we continue rewinding time beyond this point, the shrinking of space rapidly, rapidly, accelerates until and all the hydrogen ions break apart into protons and neutrons. Every object in the observable universe is at this time very close together, very dense, and very hot. Rewinding further, sub-atomic particles break and give way to smaller particles while everything continues to rapidly shrink and heat up, until a point when everything is so dense and so hot that our theoretical models break and we lose the ability to have any notion of what happened before then. The best we can do is propose that a quantum fluctuation caused a chain reaction of some kind which then lead to the expansion of the universe and progression of matter which all the observational evidence points toward.

When I talk about the big bang as if it is bona fide knowledge , what I'm saying is essentially is that the above description of the evolution of matter in the observable universe is all very well reasoned by physical science. You can focus on the fact that we cannot see beyond what we can only faultily describe as a "singularity", and say the big bang is bullocks, but you would be discounting everything that we know about what came afterward, which in every possible sense of the word, is everything.

OK then, if you want to discuss philosophy instead of just throwing around catch phrases like "Big Bang", "space itself is expanding", and "rapid expansion of heat and energy", as if there's something real that these phrases represent, then let's have a go, and see if these phrases really refer to something intelligible or not — Metaphysician Undercover

Big bang cosmology provides us with a model for past events which happens to be the best fit for all the observational data. It's taken basically 80 years for the scientific community to come to grips with it, and they'll be damned if they haven't tried to falsify it. So without ado, here's it's beginning:

In the 1920's an obscure Belgian priest and a soviet super nerd used general relativity to mathematically derive and hypothesize that space/the universe was expanding, only to be sneered at by Einstein, right up until 1929 when Edwin Hubble published his discovery that the farther away an object is from the earth (deep space objects), the quicker it is moving away from us. Everyone had more or less assumed that the distribution of matter in the universe was static and Einstein himself resisted the idea of an expanding universe even when it was an implication of his own theory (see: the cosmological constant), but the observational evidence Hubble offered could not be discounted. Unless the milky-way and some nearby galaxies are the center of the observable universe, the fact that everything is moving away from us can be more simply explained by a metric expansion of space itself rather than by proposing that everything happens to be traveling away from us as a central point. With the expansion of space itself no matter where you're at all distant objects are getting farther away from you. To be clear, metric expansion of space means that the distance between any two given points is growing (has no observable effect within local gravitational fields which bind things together).

An expanding universe implies that in the past everything was closer together, and taken to it's extreme implies that all observable objects were in a very dense (and therefore hot) cluster. "Big bang" was just a kind of simplified descriptor for the magnitude of the expansion of the early universe (in that it contained all the matter and energy in the observable universe) and contrasted well with the static universe cosmological model, and the name stuck. There are various distinct models that fall under the "big bang" moniker, but broadly they all propose and describe a very dense and very hot period of the early history of the universe which featured energetic expansion.

There's more evidence for the big bang and the metric expansion of space, but I won't try to bore you with that until we sort out whatever is unintelligible with the above briefing.

As I have already tried to make clear, my comments have nothing to do with the conclusions of modern science, or whether I like them. I am pointing out the presuppositions that underlie them, which most people - including you, apparently - adopt uncritically. This is a philosophy forum, after all. — aletheist

What I'm saying is that thanks to observational evidence displaying consistency, it's not an uncritical presupposition.

What if they are evolving so slowly at this point that it would take thousands of years before the change is large enough to exceed our usual measurement errors? What if they evolved faster in the very distant past? How would we be able to tell? Again, I have no problem with applying the laws of nature as we currently understand them to the present and (short-term) future; the issue is assuming that they were the same billions of years ago. — aletheist

Why assume they were different?

The big bang is the model of what happened if the laws of physics are more or less consistent throughout time. There's no possible model for random variance in the laws of physics.

The longer our instruments continue to measure no change in the psychical constants we have identified, the weaker the presupposition that they suddenly changed becomes.

No, we hypothesize laws of nature to explain causation; or rather, what we presuppose to be causation, rather than just random events. — aletheist

There's no causation without consistency. Think about it. If things just happened randomly, "cause" would be an incoherent term. The consistency that we do observe in causes and effects provides the basis for the "laws" (our invention) that we use to describe and predict those causes and effects.

The fact that there is consistency is why we make up laws to describe it: that consistency is what we call causation. And it's all borne out by evidence.

How long have we been capable of carefully monitoring the universe's adherence to the currently accepted laws of physics - 100 years or so? Compared to the corresponding estimate for the age of the universe, it is less than the blink of an eye. Proportionally, it is like saying that because we do not observe any significant changes in 10 seconds, a person who is 43 years old probably has not changed at all since the day he/she was born. — aletheist

Until we measure changes in causation, it just seems safer to presume that they tend not to. If and when we do measure a change, we can just invent a new law that describes how they change. Until completely random stuff starts happening, I'll choose not to assume they did simply because i might want to avoid conclusions I dislike.

Who said anything about sudden changes? Another possibility is that the laws of nature have evolved gradually over time. — aletheist

As above, if they evolve overtime and we notice that evolution, that's when we should overturn our existing axioms and adapt them accordingly. We don't notice gravity getting stronger or weaker, and if we did, we would measure it and describe it's change as a "law".

But what you're choosing to assume is that the physical constants of the universe are so inconstant that our evidence for the big bang is illusory. It almost seems like the laws of physics would need to completely reverse in order for that to be the case...

Actually she has mellowed out since then and sees a struggle between the jihadist (Medina Muslims) and Reformists to win the hearts and minds of the average, religious and peace loving Muslim (Mecca Muslims in her book Heretic). Which seems to be the sensible approach but still she intersperses such sensible things with misrepresentations of facts. — Benkei

It's been about ten years since that particular Hirsi Ali quote. I am aware that she has become more moderate on the issue (heh), but I could not resist the opportunity to share a quote which so perfectly described what sentiments you get when you combine an unrealistically simplified definition/description of a religion along with hatred of it.

It's not her hatred that I object to though, she's entitled to that, it's her simplistic and monolithic portrayal of a religion which is in reality vastly complex and internally conflicted. Luckily though, confrontation with reality causes the dissolution of that position rather than the strengthening of it.

Many Christians and deconverted Christian's I've encountered have taken a similar position with respect to Christianity: the former says, "There is only one true Christianity" and the latter says, "Yep, and it's evil". Perhaps due to living ideologically cloistered lives, the Christian only knows their version of Christianity, and perhaps emerging directly from such an ideologically cloistered life, the fresh anti-theist can only oppose what they are aware of, which amounts to a fraction of religious doctrine and practice as it concerns the greater religious world in question.

As anti-theists come to realize that there are many brands of a given religion and that not all of their practitioners are engaged in the same actions, they realize that not all religious brands are worth opposing or that not all of their criticisms apply to all of them. At this point, a new question comes into focus, one that could really do with some exploration in this thread: "What is religion?"

What is the "DNA" of a religion? Is it simply the main tenets of it's main doctrines? Is it the doctrinal body as a whole? Does that include the way doctrines change and diverge over time? To what extent is any given religious behavior a raw expression of doctrine with respect to other factors and circumstance? What is the possible variance in behavior when historical and demographic doctrinal variance along with a variance in changing environments is considered? To what extend does divergence in doctrine and behavior within and between religious groups (Islam) define individual sects as separate and discrete religions altogether?

Answering these questions is critical to delivering a robust and persuasive condemnation against a particular religion. It's really about what can be made to stick, and what the uninitiated don't realize is that in this debate religion is Teflon. Religious individuals constantly re-interpret their script and constantly change their behavior according to pressures put upon them, and when the pressure is widespread it happens en masse. The way religion expresses itself in individuals and society is amorphus; without necessary form. Once you've outlined objectionable tenets, objectionable interpretations of those tenets, and the specific individuals and groups who act on them, and why, then you can coherently and persuasively condemn them/it, but you're then only condemning one behavioral ramification (of many possible ramifications) in one environment (of many possible environments) from one interpretation (of many conflicting interpretations) of one tenant (of many conflicting tenets).

I remember reading a Hirsi quote which I believe came from her "mellowing phase", which read something like "Once [radical] Islam is defeated and dead, what's left can be reborn as a new religion, become something else, that can exist happily with the western world". I'm not exactly sure how implicit the [radical] qualifier was, but it shows that her understanding of religion as a whole was developing. The idea that religion dies and becomes something else when it changes is the beginning of a more holistic understanding of what religion actually is: an ever diverse, ever changing, ever dividing, ever evolving set and series of creatures, many of whom will happily defy even their own logic in the pursuit of survival and advancement, and not all of whom make for worthy enemies.

No, not causation in general; rather, the specific laws of nature as we observe them operating today. — aletheist

If you think about it, the laws of nature define causation. The pull of gravity causes movement. The strong and weak nuclear forces cause atomic and molecular activity, and electromagnetic fields have effects (causes) of their own. Change the laws and you change causation

We also have no good reason to presume that they were exactly the same over that entire vast period of time. — aletheist

Except for the fact that the laws of physics haven't yet changed under our watchful eyes. they remain stoicly and suspiciously consistent.

It's more reasonable to assume the laws didn't suddenly change in the past because they don't suddenly change right now. If the laws kept suddenly changing, then I would be with you in assuming that in the past they did change.

By the law of conservation of energy, energy does not expand. — Metaphysician Undercover

Energy can cause expansion, such as in explosions.

General relativity leaves us with the notion of spatial expansion, which is nonsense. This indicates that general relativity is inadequate for understanding the nature of the universe. — Metaphysician Undercover

Wow.

So general relativity, a theory with mountains of evidence to confirm it, is "nonsense" because you don't like the notion of spatial expansion. Wonderful argument. Top marks.

And I'll say it again, that's just unintelligible nonsense. What's the point in describing something as unintelligible nonsense rather than just saying "we don't know", other than to create the deceptive impression that one knows what one is talking about, when this is really not the case. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you're honest with yourself I think you will realize that the rapid expansion description of the universe isn't "just unintelligible nonsense".

You want us to say "we don't know", but we do know. We know that roughly 13.7 billion years ago all the matter and energy in the universe was in a very hot and very state, and expanded.

That's not nonsense, nonsense would read like this: " the real issue is the relationship between space and time which relativity theory creates, making time a fourth dimension. This leaves us incapable of understanding non-dimensional things. We know that there is zero dimensional existence, the evidence is abundant in mathematics. The only logical way to incorporate the non-dimensional into our understanding of reality is to allow time to be the 0th dimension. This requires establishing a completely different relationship between time and space from the one which relativity gives us, which makes time the fourth dimension."

You are not even trying to understand the point that I am actually making. — aletheist

I think I understand it. You're saying that since we cannot be sure causation happened in the past like it does in the present, we cannot be sure evidence of past events is meaningful or points to what really happened.

Sure... We cannot be sure...

But absolute certainty never was on the docket, only reasonable belief. We have no good reason to presume that physical constants were different in the past, except possibly in the very hot and dense early universe where the big bang description still applies.

Arbitrarily presuming that the laws of physics suddenly changed at some point (in order to avoid a conclusion we don't like: the rapid expansion model) goes against the preponderance of observational evidence we do have.

That the past, present, and future are connected does not entail that that the laws of nature are invariant throughout all time. Such a conclusion requires the presupposition of causal determinism, which many people (quite reasonably) reject. — aletheist

Basically you're suggesting that even though empirical science has given ample evidence to warrant accepting the big bang, they might be wrong because of some sort of magical interference.

Spooky dice rolls. Newtonian indeterminacy. The Hand of God. Call them what you will, on-going experimentation continuously weakens the case that can be made for them. So long as the technology which is built using the laws we hope are constant keeps working, it's good enough for me.

"Expansion of heat and energy" is a nonsense phrase. It doesn't make any sense at all to say that heat or energy expands. This idea just comes about from the inadequacies of general relativity to provide us with the means to understand what really has happened. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not nonsense at all. Explosions are the rapid expansion that results from a sudden release of heat and energy.

But what are you really saying here. "General relativity is inadequate"? What are it's inadequacies?

"The heat-expansion event" is just short hand for saying that approximately 13.7 billion years ago, all the matter and energy that is in the observable universe was in a very hot and very dense state as it expanded outward.

P.S, Oblate spheroids are round!

What I want to know is what public policy you, and others that advance the argument that 'Islam is fundamentally more violent' would like to see coming out of this. What are your public policy recommendations? — andrewk

Once accepted that Islam itself is broadly the problem, the political ramifications are somewhat chilling. in the words of Hirsi Ali :

I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy... In all forms [militarily], and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed

It's interesting that someone so steeped in the harm that religion can cause so carelessly advocates revoking religious freedom to convert to Islam, which might as well be an apostasy law, and goes on to suggest that there should or could be military force used against Islam itself (how I know not). For Ayaan there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim, only lazy ones who don't obey the religion and the radicals which represent true Islam. I'm totally with her that religion in schools is a dumb thing, but it's not as if over-sensitive pro-Islamic curriculum elements have much to do with any violence.

How does causation, all by itself, warrant beliefs about past behavior on the basis of present observations? — aletheist

Brute force.

Causation is just one of those things that keeps showing to be true via experience and observation.


It's fundamentally required to exist for science to work, and it needs to be extremely consistent for science to provide us with reliable predictions and understandings. I can only prove it by repeated experimentation.

How can we "prove" any theories about the past, entirely on the basis of present observations? — aletheist

We take the causal relationships that we observe and in the same way we use them to make future predictions, we simply reverse them to infer the past.

Explosions cause debris fields. When we explode things we predict that the physical forces emanating outward from a local point creates a certain pattern in the resulting scattering of matter that we call a debris field. When we find a debris field, we reason that an explosion is what caused it.

I have no problem with relying on our best theories about how the universe currently works to make fairly definitive statements about the present, and even some predictions about the future (which we can subsequently test to see if they are borne out). The issue is uncritically adopting the same level of confidence when making fairly definitive statements about the past, especially the very distant past; e.g., "The moon began orbiting the earth 4.5 billion years ago." — aletheist

The reason why we can use observations of the present to predict (and thereby understand) the future is because the present and the future are connected. The past and the present are also connected, via causation. It's an axiomatic truth that is unproductive and unreasonable to deny.

This is a very meaningless statement. We know that an event X occurred, but we don't know what X was. Every time we attempt to describe X, we are probably wrong, so how can we even make the claim that X occurred? X has absolutely no meaning because we don't know what X is. It's like saying I know that there is something there, but I have absolutely no idea what it is. What's the point in even naming it X, if it could be absolutely anything? Why not call it what it is, the unknown, instead of creating the false impression that there is something known here? — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not meaningless at all.

We know the rapid expansion of heat and energy happened; an explosion. It's like we've found an area where there is clear evidence of an explosion having occured, but we don't know what the bomb was, why it exploded, (or who may have put it there).

We know X, a heat-expansion event, occurred, but we don't know everything about it. Why is that so intellectually upsetting to people?

We have a very good description of what the big bang was, we just don't know have a complete and full description with receipt. As science progresses though we're getting better and better pictures of the past, including the big bang. Astrophysics has accepted and incorporated the rapid expansion model for quite awhile now, and as inter-disciplinary work starts to emerge more and more (quantum physics applied to the study of the early universe for instance) it's rapidly solidifying as a well confirmed scientific fact.

Ask a physicist, and they're likely to tell you that we're as certain that a big bang of some sort occurred as we are certain that the earth is round.

What presuppositions must one adopt in order to predict past behavior on the basis of present measurements? — aletheist

Causation.

What presuppositions must one adopt in order to estimate the age of the oldest observable stars and star clusters? — aletheist

Proven theories pertaining to astrophysics.

Your bias is showing; you are imposing your own presuppositions as rational requirements that everyone must adopt, without identifying them let alone providing justification for them. — aletheist

Huh?!?

Your personal presuppositions, whatever they may be, do not challenge the scientific truths that I've described. I never said anyone must adopt anything. What i said was that in order to overturn these examples of scientific truth as unreasonable or unreliable you need to confront overwhelming amounts of evidence.

You can try and say something like "Oh but your evidence is based on your personal presuppositions", but that's just a platitude that can be said about anything.

"The Moon orbits the Earth".

"Oh but what presuppositions must one adopt in order to asses the position of the moon?".

"Reasonable ones."

...each of us has certain presuppositions that dictate what we count as evidence and how we evaluate it, and different people can have different presuppositions, such that what is reasonable to some is not to others. I see it as an important role of philosophy to expose those presuppositions so that we are not adopting them uncritically. — aletheist

The scientific method rejects the presupposition of truth. What counts as truth in science is generally an explanatory model with predictive power and confirmed through experimentation. When a scientific theory has been established, the predictive power that it offers remains consistent regardless of whether or not individuals happen to find them reasonable; that's what makes them scientifically reasonable (reliability).

I do not see how anyone can possibly know that the universe is 13.75 billion years old.... — aletheist

One way we can tell is by measuring the continual expansion/separation between observable bodies of matter, and by charting their positions, speeds and distances we can predict how long it took for them all to arrive at where they are from the central point of expansion.

Another way we can try to tell the age of the universe is by figuring out the age of the oldest observable stars and star clusters. We can find no star clusters older than about 13 billion years, which is evidence supporting the 13.75 number we get from measuring the observable expansion.

What are you assuming when you claim to know that the Big Bang happened, which another individual could reasonably dispute? — aletheist

"Reasonably dispute"? Basically nothing. They could start by hacking away at the foundations of science. Questioning the pervasiveness of causation is one avenue, just not a reasonable one.

They could question the particulars of astrophysics and astronomical science and the reliability of observations and measurements that we make, but because the evidence is so overwhelming it's not foreseeable that such an objection could be made with a reasonable degree of strength.

At this point, "dispute" becomes "denial"...

It's the overwhelming preponderance of evidence. In order to dismantle the plethora of scientific observations, theories, and experimental confirmation which describes seemingly uncanny things like spatial expansion, time dilation, and the big bang, we would need to somehow come in with something that has more predictive power and explains more things and in more simple terms, to such a degree that it can overturn what is basically the whole of science and physics.

We know the big bang happened (but we don't know exactly what it was) using the same logic that a detective who finds a murderer knows that they are the murderer. It's always possible that evidence was fabricated or misinterpreted - we can never know for certain - but in science and in life what's practical is to talk about degrees of reasonability. Science accepts the rapid expansion model because it's evidence is highly reasonable.

What these observations do, is undermine the notion that 'life arose by chance'. There is an element of chance, but chance is only meaningful when there are various possibilities, and for there to be domain of possibility, something has to exist already. — Wayfarer

The pervasiveness of causality undermines "chance" in the universe. When we say "life arose by chance" we don't mean to say that things could have been different, we mean it was un-directed by some kind of intelligence. In the same way that the formation of a storm is determined by the laws of physics, hypothetically abiogenesis can also occur as an emergent phenomenon from basic laws. "The chance of life forming" then becomes a forecast about how frequently life tends to emerge in a given system, not a statement about the kind of "chance" that would conflict with causation.

It's the equivalent of saying that a 6 sided dice has a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6, which is true; although in any given dice roll the laws of physics still determine the necessary result.

Using the anthropic principle to reason that there is a fix as it relates to actual abiogenesis in our actual universe suffers from the problem of insufficient data. All we know about actual abiogenesis right now is basically that it might have happened once before, but we don't know the shape of the dice that describe it's frequency, or how many sides there are on that dice, (or how many of those sides would actually result in life). We can imply that there is a dice (abiogenesis occured), but as our only data point point this can tell us absolutely nothing about the statistical likelihood of abiogenesis actually occurring in our universe (as a trend, not a causality breaking phenomenon). If you run a survey that gets only one respondent, then the resulting statistical conclusions would be maximally weak. Until we observe abiogenesis happening, or not happening, elsewhere we will have no hard observational data to qualify it's statistical likelihood. Even if we scoured the entire universe and found that abiogenesis only happened a single time (making us maximally lucky, and the anthropic principle maximally persuasive) if we understand the causal mechanisms which caused life to emerge then why should we be surprised that in an unfathomably massive universe, very very unlikely events occur; actually inferring a fix is still unjustified.

If we speak of a variance of possible universes (each with different pre-determined causal outcomes, some with life, and some without), we're still utterly lacking sufficient observational data to confirm it because we get no data from other universes. And even if we did prove that it's true we're living in the luckiest of universes, this could either be because we are in fact lucky, or some intelligent entity rigged our universe to be an interesting one

The anthropic principle is broadly an appeal to existence itself. It presumes that non-existence (and non-life) is more likely than existence (and life), and broadly calls shenanigans on the universe itself simply because it exists and we within it. The scientific knowledge upon which arguments using the anthropic principle are based are definitely very important and interesting, such as the (attempt to) forecast of how frequently abiogenesis will occur in a given system, but it does not justify or strengthen the leap from "abiogenesis occured" to "the universe was rigged for abiogenesis". An easy way to logically show this is to simply challenge the likelihood of some intelligent designer or manipulator as a complete unknown, possibly with the same degree of unlikelihood as finding one's self within the luckiest universe in the first place. "The fixer" is very clearly just an arbitrary substitution for luck.

I don't think the op was asking anything in earnest. It was just inviting a bitchfest. — Mongrel

I fully expected bitching, but that's something that happens when discussing all controversial topics. It's the natural grime of labored discourse. I was however asking something in earnest: 'What am I missing about Islam that makes it inherently more violent than the other Abrahamic religions?".

Given the context of the answer I myself provided and defended, this thread is an open challenge for anyone to criticize my position, or to counter it by presenting their own. I realize that my views on this subject are somewhat robust (maybe that's good, maybe that's bad), so that's why I've elected to take a hard position and labored to defend it. I put my views on the line to be challenged as much as possible.

"Bitching" is an unfair description of the overall response to this thread, though there's been some. Overall the discourse has been somewhat productive. Even if "bitching" is all someone can muster, I can still hope that as they ricochet off the hard position I've defended in this thread that I may have at least altered their intellectual trajectory more toward what I believe is the truth.

I don't think that's correct, because it is the distance between objects which is expanding, not objects themselves. Objects don't expand. If you think that there is a real entity called "space" existing between objects, which is expanding, then what about the space within objects? — Metaphysician Undercover

"Space" isn't your run of the mill object. I'm not a physicist, but I reckon it has something to do with local gravitational fields counteracting the force or effect of constant expansion of space. Objects don't fly apart because the forces binding them are greater than the forces pulling them apart.

I think that the concept of spatial expansion is really just the result of our inadequate understanding of the relationships between space, time, matter, and gravity. The theories used here misguide us. — Metaphysician Undercover

The evidence and experiment based theories guide us, literally and figuratively. We would not be able to make even GPS devices work without using highfalutin theories like general and special relativity. The concept of spatial expansion seems inadequate because our understanding of the universe is inadequate. We want things to be simple and in terms we readily comprehend but unfortunately the universe has unending complexity that stands in the way of adequate/complete/simple understanding. The seeming ridiculousness of some advanced scientific theories is something everyone would have liked to avoid, but the pursuit of truth takes us where it wants to go, not where we want to.

I think it's interesting that the 'origin of life' is the one type of event for which the favoured scientific explanation is that it was a chance occurence. In all other matters, one expects a scientific hypothesis to provide a cause, or a reason, for what it seeks to explain. But not here. — Wayfarer

Our perspective on the possibility of life is sort of like the possibility of precipitation except we know less about the conditions and physical processes which actually causes it to happen.

We forecast how likely or unlikely a specific event happening is, in this case, without ever having seen such an event happen and without understanding how it works. All we have is the hypothetical assumption that it can happen and did happen and a mixed bag of circumstantial guesswork.

The chance involved in abiogenesis is very much like weather prediction, except it concerns an event that is still theoretical. Predicting the probability of life is like trying to predict how likely it is for a storm to form using only "at least 1 storm has existed" as information to base that prediction from. If we had perfect meteorological knowledge and perfect weather monitoring sattelites, we could say with 100% certainty when and where the next storm would emerge because we would understand the physical processes.

answer for yourself, what it is that is expanding — Metaphysician Undercover

Space itself is expanding.

Here's the thing though: All the energy we can observe we are damn sure was very hot and very compressed in the moments after the big bang, whatever it was. Whatever caused the big bang, we don't know. When we say that the big bang is responsible for "all that exists", we only mean to say that the big bang is responsible for the space we occupy and the matter that fills it. There could be a multiverse of big bangs, we don't know.

All we know is that we're living in the energetic diffusion of a 13.75 billion year event that we can only describe as very hot and very dense. This understanding might be inadequate, but it is nonetheless accurate.

But of course! the strength of gravitational constants and the strong/weak nuclear forces need to be exactly what they are for "matter" to exist because "matter" as we know it is what came to exist under the current physical settings. If they were different, it's possible fundamentally different forms of matter would have emerged in their place, and subsequent intelligence composed of said matter would be still be amazed at how finely tuned their laws of physics are.

That carbon is abundantly produced in stars, in part thanks to the finely tuned laws of physics, makes carbon prevalent, which makes it readily available as a candidate for use in the composition of life. If things other than carbon were abundantly produced in it's place, perhaps life could/did/would emerge using them as a base instead.

The anthropic principle takes the way the world is and the way humans are, and comes up with the idea that we were made for each-other. But since human life evolved and emerged within the constraints of the world that does happen to exist, our biology is necessarily built upon and around those physical constraints. The atmosphere isn't breathable air because that's what is needed for life, we use air because that's what was available for life to utilize as it evolved in an oxygen rich environment.

In more ways than we know the physical laws and constants which govern the cosmos played a role in creating the specific and local environment we find ourselves in. But in the same way that life on earth evolved around the conditions of the earth, the interaction of matter in the cosmos evolved around the laws of physics. The matter that does exist is an expression of the laws of physics in the same way that life on earth is an expression of what can survive there.

I am inordinately fond of Canadians - even so far as to enjoy their much derided drama series Between - and am very pleased to see continuing evidence of their good sense and high degree of civilisation. — andrewk

Canadians have an unyielding existential need to please people, and it's hard work (sometimes we fail [see: Bieber, Between, Nickelback]). It's not like we're better than everyone else, it's just that we need you to think we are so you will like us.

This is the Canadian practice known as "Tequila", which is where we deceive you into thinking we're "nice" (mostly with strong alcohol, hence the term) until one day when our numbers are sufficient, we will all rise up and politely ask everyone for our dignity back...

It's not so much that god commands it, but rather that it pleases him because it is in line with some intangible moral perfection that exists high in the cherry tree. And yet the God of any religion happily allows us to ascribe our own moral views to theirs, especially when we want to justify the violence we often desire.

It might take thirty years of war in the Islamic world for all of it's nations, cultures and peoples to realize that violent conflict driven by religious difference and religious ideology is fundamentally unproductive, but once firmly united under that realization should have no trouble clinging to God's more peaceful commandments in the name of progress and reform.

The big bang happened folks. It was undeniably the heat event that is responsible for the cosmos at large. "Beginning", "Everything", "Infinite", these are red-herrings; we know an expansion happened.

So here we sit, some 13.75 billion years later, scratching shaking our heads and asking "how" at every turn.

We don't know how life formed, but we know that it did: that's the problem. And some of the possibilities are fascinating.

An earthly primordial soup is one possibility. 3-4 Billion years ago the right atoms and molecules were bouncing around in a naturally occurring mixture of inanimate elements and the first "self-replicating coil of proto-DNA" occurred by chance. Something to note here is that only a few chemical bonds would be required to set up a molecular structure that replicates by assimilating more molecules from the environment into it's structure (the same principle that allows a large ice crystal to form and grow from a single seed crystal). The rest is time and more chance.

It occurs from this that we're either very lucky or that life isn't such an unlikely combination of matter that comes about from the random mixing of elements. It's very tempting to say that since life seems like a very unlikely random combination of matter, that it's therefore more likely that life originated from elsewhere in the universe and drifted to earth, but because we only have one data point in our sample group (we won the lottery of being alive) in reality this tells us nothing about the prevalence of life elsewhere other than "it's possible".

I do however choose to subscribe to the notion of pan-spermia (it's of no real consequence to do so). Why settle for proverbial volcanic muck when you can imagine whole nebulae of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon? We know that extremophile bacteria (and even multi-cellular organisms) can survive the vacuum of space, so assuming there is or was enough "mixing" of matter within a galaxy or even inter-galactically, then why could old and distant genetic material not start reproducing again once it is carried to a suitable environment?

It makes abiogenesis easier to imagine (while explaining life on earth) in light of how complicated all carbon based life actually is; the more unlikely abiogenesis seems, the more I use pan-spermia to make the odds seem reasonable.

Logically though, whether or not abiogenesis is super unlikely (we're alone in the universe), or actually not uncommon at all (the universe is downright lousy with life), the mere fact that we are here and are alive can be of no help in making a determination either way. If I understood @Wayfarer correctly, when Hoyle said "the fix is in" after discovering the uncanny properties of carbon which makes it necessary and uniquely suited to facilitating life, he was wrong to think that this meant anything beyond an understanding and description of existing genetic mechanisms. It's not surprising that in discovering the physical mechanisms of our own biology we discover parts which play fundamental roles, if non-carbon based life emerged elsewhere, it too would incorporate unique properties of diverse parts in it's composition. Lightning is strikingly uncanny in the natural world, but we don't look at it as if it's existence is some miraculous mystery (oh but we used to) because we understand it. We understand the conditions that cause lightning, how it works, and now it's no more mysterious than a polished river stone. Until we actually understand abiogenesis there will be no satisfying answer, only mystery.

Our only consolation is mystery and speculation, so toward that end:

Pan-spermia is a compelling theory, but what if Hoyle was right in that carbon based biological life was designed, built in a lab, and sent out into the universe to replicate and infest goldy-locks planets toward some unknown end. What might our designers look like?

And as we all realize by now in our heart of hearts, machine based artificial intelligence will be the only form of life suited to explore deep space. Self-replicating machines, if robust enough, could represent the genesis of a form of life that could make biological life look like swamp grass.

Is that how evolution really happens?

It is alarming that you think that finding that list of atrocities abhorrent needs defending. — tom

It's alarming that you think that list of atrocities applies uniformly to Islam, as if the whole 1.5 billion something Muslims would stand behind those values.

It's also alarming how consistently you avoid answering my direct questions; I never asked you to defend that murder, slavery, etc, is abhorrent, I asked you to present a position as to why or how Islam promotes them more so than other religions.

What has being an atheist got to do with finding any of this abhorrent? — tom

I'm trying to understand if you actually have a position to defend, and if so what it is. If you are a staunch hard-atheist and an anti-theist then I could somewhat understand what your point is in constantly re-posting provocative memes without contributing to the actual discussion beyond that.Burn religion, sure... But if you for instance, condone Christianity, then all I would need to do is repackage your statements and apply them to it in order to show hypocrisy in your position.

I'm forced to ask because you ignore the content of all of my responses in favor of the next verse. Such emotive singing is typical of the digital age; a new oral tradition with which to simplify our understanding of the world.

What has abhorrence at such behaviour got to do with atheism? — tom

I'm just trying to understand the source of your motivation for continuously restating contentious platitudes without any attempt at providing critical analysis or thought to accompany them. Do you specifically oppose Islam and not other religions whose texts and histories share similar degrees of abhorrence? If not, why not?

Beyond your moral condemnation of Islam, how else ought we oppose it?

I presume you support death to apostates and atheists? — tom

I am an atheist, so that would be a bit hypocritical of me (agnostic soft-atheist).

What do you support though? Anti-religious sentiment in general? Are you a full blown hard-atheist anti-theist? You've condemned Islam, so what now?

I can understand morally opposing religion on the basis of the harm that it contributes to, but I cannot understand how we could eliminate the entirety of one or all religions without causing more harm than those religions cause in the first place.

Indeed, thanks for pointing that out. I had thrown an -ism onto the end of anti-Islam, and totally missed the resulting ambiguity.

Lacking central authority and already being so diverse in practice and culture across different regions makes it unlikely that major changes to doctrine or practice will come from a religious hierarchy like the papacy or broad reform such as Protestantism, but as cultural values shift (and there is pressure on them to shift, rest assured) reform on any level becomes more digestible to Islamic populations and more achievable for the many tiers of religious leaders and scholars of the Islamic world who risk embracing it. If the Islamic public continues to westernize, then at some point not embracing reform will become more risky than embracing it.

That said, not all practicing Muslims seem to require reform. The problem of violent Islam such as it is remains specific to individuals, groups and interpretations rather than pertaining to the ideology and it's practitioners as a whole. There are many secular Muslims, and as orthodoxy perhaps subsides (as it did for Christians) secularism might provide the environment necessary for substantial reform to emerge. As I mentioned earlier though, it depends large on who is around and how they feel after the dust settles from the current chaos widespread across the Islamic world.

It's quite interesting indeed.

As a somewhat experienced and net-savvy atheist I'm keenly aware of the varying levels of anti-theism that spans the secular community. Hitchens and perhaps Dawkins were the gold standards of anti-theism in that their anti-theist views ("Religion is poison" - Hitchens) were applied somewhat
consistently to most religions (certainly the Abrahamic three), but since the anti-Islamic rise in the west, it's as if new anti-theists have arrived on the scene who are only opposed to the notion of one particular theism, and they're no longer primarily atheist or even secular to begin with.

That Christians should hold the position that another person ought not to have the right to exist in society for subscribing to Islam, especially given they all claim to worship the same "all forgiving" monotheistic deity, is flabbergasting. Intolerance, meet intolerance (or: religious freedom, meet ignorance and hypocricy)

The broad mishmash of individuals from previously politically disunited groups (theists, hard/soft atheists, agnostics, and some right wing/isolationist ideologues) who find common ground in their staunch and selective opposition to Islam is what gives rise to the chorus of self-reinforcing anti-Islamic rhetoric which ranges from "Islam is inherently more dangerous" to "fight back against Islam in the west order to protect your faith and your children from impending invasion and assimilation". That there is a critical mass of it to begin (which is what enables it to grow within internet media and culture) more or less coalesced in the post 9/11 world and as online media itself was taking shape.

Anti-theism is a double-edged war-axe of a position to wield, and if done with hypocrisy or poor form is more damaging to itself than to religion. It really does take someone like Hitchens to do it well if hard anti-theism is to be wielded even somewhat persuasively. And so, the now razor sharp extremes of new devout anti-Islamic pundits, who generally have very little experience in the somewhat developed argument against religion, wind up making more of a mockery of their own position the more vehemently they try to defend it.

What fascinates me most is the way that online media itself shapes and enables new forms of organization around and based on ideas which happen to be highly motivating (such as the fear and hatred of something) and their resulting evolution and accompanying trends and conflicts.

Given that you have purposefully left out the beginning of the sura, which explicitly states that the verse is about the Jews, I've got to ask: What are you trying to achieve by spreading blatant misinformation?

Do you really think no one has access to a Quran? — tom

Whether or not the verse is about Jews, or meant to apply only to Jews, makes no difference. What matters is how people choose to interpret it. If I can convince someone to not kill by misrepresenting the Qur'an, then that's fine by me. I was introduced to the verse by Muslims who interpret it's meaning as I have presented. I googled a few key words and copy/pasted it as is from the first available source.

Little did I know that my friend lied to me about what he believed and the internet lied to me about how people interpret it!

Or to be more specific, it is taqqiya. — tom

I first heard this term about 5 years ago while on a website called BlogTalkRadio. EDL (English Defense League, a far-right ultra-Christian group dedicated to "combating the evil scourge of Islam") talk show hosts were talking about how "Taqqiya" was being used against the west by a monolithic Islamic conspiracy designed to overthrow it. They say that Muslims actually all want western society to collapse and be replaced by a global Islamic caliphate, and in order to achieve this they tell lies and misrepresent the truth of their religion (Taqqiya) in order to conceal it's abhorrence and the greater conspiracy.

They assured me that all Muslims living abroad are patiently out-breeding the white Christians and teaching their murderous desires to their children in secret, until one day when they all plan to suddenly act in coordinated rebellion against the west and take over by voting sharia into government and physically taking the streets. And it will all be too late, and all be my fault for not seeing through the taqiya and hating all Muslims for being evil liars bent on global domination...

As far as I know, actual Taqiya came from a point in history where a group of Shia Muslims lied about the particulars of their faith to another Muslim group who were set to execute them for heresy. As far as I understand it was basically akin to Jews pretending to be Christian in order to escape anti-semetic persecution. If you ask a random arab what "taqiya" means (at least 5 or 6 years ago when it wasn't a far-right meme), they'll have no clue what you're talking about (AHA, MORE EVIDENCE OF TAQIYA!).

It's a fancy way of saying "All Muslims are liars", which is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to challenging Islamic ideology with any intellectual caliber. When a Muslim professes to interpret a particular verse as advocating peace, and you say "no you're lying", how can they possibly respond?

As you say, the Qur'an is there for all to read, and those Muslim groups which do profess extreme views don't seem to have any shyness about doing so, so what's the intention behind saying "No, moderate Muslims are actually lying when they believe in peace/behave peacefully"?.

Are they actually lying about what they believe? And you're helping by pointing that out? Are all Muslims engaged in a global conspiracy to dominate the west through numbers, force, and unity, such as the EDL would have us believe?

You're mostly regurgitating memes at this point Tom.

Why?

I think it's because Islam is your grand enemy, your villain, whose simple nature is understood in the most basic possible terms - violent, decietful, evil - , and so becomes the bogeyman that explains everything bad in the Islamic world, and reaffirms what I think is actually your main position: the fear and loathing of Islam, (as compared with your feelings toward Christianity, let's say).

In discussions where the moral abhorrence of rape and murder is already a given, we need not add the clause "which is of course very terrible" every-time rape or murder is alluded to. It's a waste of time and mental energy whose only benefit is making us feel like we're morally upright folk, which makes no difference to this discussion.

But if you feel it must be said, then here it is from the Qur'an:

Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind. — Qur’an, 5:32