zombie84 said:

comparing Islam to Christianity is ignorant. What is the percentage of extremist American Christians? The ones that attend gay marriage protests, burn Harry Potter books and want to kill doctors? Maybe 1%? That means there is roughly 1.6 million of these people in the USA. Saying "the difference between Muslims and Christians" is just stupid.

So, both sides of a particular religious difference can be found to have crazily violent people within their ranks and, as a result, we are therefore unable to make any reasoned judgments regarding which side might be more likely to produce crazily violent people in a logically generalized sense?

Both a barbaric society and a civilized society will produce murderers within their ranks to some extent. However, it is foolish to pretend that we cannot make a general distinction about which is more likely to do that. Even more important, it is extremely foolish to overlook teachings, perspectives, and ethics that influence mankind toward destructive behaviors. To casually throw out all analysis of human value systems for the sake of being "fair" is ridiculous to me.

I generally know who I see creating relatively-unprovoked, large-scale conflicts around the world. I generally know who I see murdering Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and other types of people around the world while only offering the most laughable and shameful excuses in justification. Other, generalized groups of people have similar problems but do not have them of the same size, do not tolerate them as much, and do not have as many beliefs that breed them. This was the only point I saw Arnie.d making and I think it is incredibly unfair to call him ignorant for that.

Oh, and 1% is way, way too high.