This is inherently why all organized religion is bad.
"Only 5% of our teachers become mass murderers in this school!"
If someone said that, you'd be asking questions...
Have Buddhists been the instigators of major religious conflicts? - or has buddhist violence been in response to violence inflicted on them by other cults first? Genuinely curious to know...
I'm not sure about hinduism in south asia, but the vast majority of christian and islamic violence, warfare and conquest globally has been due to christian and islamic supremacism and they have instigated it themselves simply by coming into contact with unbelievers.
Those are ethnic conflicts though, Sri Lankan Tamils and Native Sri Lankans have had violence and issue of Autonomy, and it was after major deal with India which included refugee intake, and a dictator who India agreed to look away from his abuse of power in return for a non secretarian government did it stop.
Idk about Sri lanka but the Rohingyas muslims of Myanmar were not that much of a peaceful community in themselves.... (You may do your research on that yourself)
In return the population of the country made the whole of ethnic group to be out of the country.
And yea the occupation of territory becomes kinda useless in this matter if you do your research.
Aye aye
It's not something I said for you being lazy or something. It's just that it's sensetive content which i don't want to read again to be able to quote.
What should one look at? SL conflict was between ethnic group Tamil vs Sri Lankan govt. It wasn't religious fight.
Myanmar is a military ruled country, military oppressed every group, specially muslims. Since Muslims live on the western/northern border and have been trying to join hands with neighbouring Muslim country (Bangladesh currently, formerly Islamic republic of Pakistan), military junta targeted them. Go back to the colonial era, and you will see that Muslim side wasn't keen to be part of a non-muslim country. It isn't a simple majority oppressing minority.
> Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are all equally false religions whose followers are equally peaceful as minorities and equally violent as a majority
That's factually incorrect. We don't need to worry about Jain suicide bombers, for example. In fact, the more extreme you take the Jain doctrine literally, the less we need to worry about you.
Now do I agree that *overall* theism can bring out the worst in people? Of course.
But let's not lower ourselves to the baseless overgeneralizing we hear only too much on the other side.
> [Jains have similar views with Hindus that violence in self-defence can be justified, and that a soldier who kills enemies in combat is performing a legitimate duty. Jain communities accepted the use of military power for their defence; there were Jain monarchs, military commanders, and soldiers.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism)
Jainism is no different from any other religion. All of them say that violence is bad, but acceptable in self-defense. The question then becomes what is considered defense? No one wants to think they’re acting offensively. For example, the U.S. rebranded the Department of War to Department of Defense.
I think most members of all religions are broadly peaceful. Most humans are peaceful overall. But it’s common within religions to form smaller sects that interpret doctrine differently. So while one Jain individual or sect might choose non-violence even if it results in their death, another might justify violence as self defense. I popped over to the Jainism sub for a moment to double check and there is disagreement on this topic.
This gets at the heart of the problem with using religion as a moral guide. They’re not objective truths created by a god. They’re collections of stories and suggestions created by humans. You can interpret them however you want and use them to justify whatever you want. They’re just story books created by people and interpreted by other people.
As such, I think the percentage of culturally religious people, devout believers, and violent extremists is roughly the same in all religions. What varies is the circumstances members of a given religion find themselves in at a given point of human history. I don’t believe in god, only humans. And as far as I can tell, human nature is the same everywhere. As much as fans of rival NFL or NBA teams hate this comparison, they’re basically all the same.
>What varies is the circumstances members of a given religion find themselves in at a given point of human history. I don’t believe in god, only humans. And as far as I can tell, human nature is the same everywhere.
I read over this initially, but now it made me discover that apparently, my euro's aren't good enough for Reddit to buy gold. And I'm far too lazy to join the contributor program, that just seems like a lot of work. But please consider yourself gilded, if only in spirit. I hope this will compensate for my lack of compatible banking system:
There's a concept in science called [Explanatory Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_power), it is an extra property, apart from being true or false, that a given statement, hypothesis or theory has. Your above statement has enough explanatory power to built entire philosophies on top of it.
Whenever people reason from the assumption your statement is false, they will sooner or later find themselves drowning in paradoxes. If religions are false, does that mean that MLK was wrong? How come there are Muslim's feeding the hungry and Christians calling for the blood of the non-believers? How can they be perpetrators and victims at the same time? Who are the bad guys? Who are the good guys? Why don´t they behave like others of their supposed kind?
But when they reason from the assumption your statement is true, all these paradoxes will dissolve like snow in the sun. Because it allows for the complexities we see around us. It's no longer hard to see why it is what it is when we assume human nature to be homogeneous and circumstances to be the main deciding factor. As I said, its explanatory power is awesome. But still, this only tells us what it is, not what we should do...
So imagine I'm a politician in need of a fundamental principle to base my policies on. Given the explanatory power discussed earlier I decide to go with the above. What would be the first prescriptive element we could distill from it? What conclusion does it inevitably lead to?
It would lead to the the conclusion that we *cannot and should not ever discriminate*. It leads to the conclusion that we should judge individuals by their actions, not merely by the group they belong to. It leads to the conclusion that for any law to be fair, it must be applied to everyone equally. In short, it will lead to truly humanistic, truly egalitarian policies. All this follows from the simple observation you made. And I'd vote for a politician like that.
As I expected a lot of people choose to debate you on this. By arguing that it is evidently true that Buddhists aren't bombing middle eastern town squares and the like. So I thought I'd let you know that there is at least someone who agrees and tries to see the bigger picture with you. Again, hang in there.
> Jainism is no different from any other religion. All of them say that violence is bad, but acceptable in self-defense.
First of all, not every religion says violence is bad. Some even mandate it in their doctrines against non-believers. So yes, there is a difference
Second, virtually every secular society recognizes the right to self-defense. This principle is embedded in their legal systems and is considered a fundamental human right. The justification is straightforward: individuals have the inherent right to protect themselves from harm.
My point is that all these texts are made up nonsense and believers and non-believers can interpret them however they want. If you’re an atheist and want to make the case that the Torah, Bible, Quran, etc. support offensive violence against non-believers, you can easily do that. If you’re a believer, you can use these texts to justify self-defense and then use violence however you want. If you’re a believer, you can also interpret these books as supportive of peace and non-violence.
> [While numerous scholars explain Quranic phrases on violence to be only in the context of a defensive response to oppression; violent groups have interpreted verses to endorse their violent actions and made the Quran's teachings on violence and war a topic of vigorous debate, though it is clear that the Quran does not condone violence with no reason](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_the_Quran)
A drug that heals you from a disease has an effect. A poison that makes you sick also has an effect. Meanwhile, a placebo doesn’t have any effect at all. It’s just nonsense. There’s a placebo effect where if you want to imagine a pill as a medicine, you feel better. If you imagine it as a poison, you feel worse. Religious texts have no power. They’re just placebos that people can interpret however they want.
As for secular societies recognizing self-defense, that’s my whole point. All humans are the same regardless of religion. Conflicts are dictated by access to natural resources and game theory, not made up stories. Religions aren’t medicine or poison. They’re just placebos that create a placebo effect.
This is why I find the idea that Islam is uniquely violent or that Jainism is uniquely non-violent to be silly and historically inaccurate. The texts can be interpreted however you want, and you can use them to justify any action as evil or righteous. There is no god and these story books were created by regular humans.
>They’re collections of stories and suggestions created by humans. You can interpret them however you want and use them to justify whatever you want
Then there is Faith. Which is to say, once you've decided on your personal interpretation of cherry picked sections of religious doctrine, you must now consider this point of view to be, without a shadow of doubt, the inviolable Will of God. Which implies that anyone voicing a different point of view isn't just wrong, they are an enemy of God. To best serve God it follows that you should "do what
must be done" to silence the dissent. It's dirty work but the end justifies the means.
All of the above follows from Faith itself, regardless of the specifics of your belief. It's hard to respect other points of view when you're not allowed to doubt your own.
Right, that’s why these religions all suck. But it’s the process of faith that leads to violence, not the specific book they based their faith upon. It’s sort of like how all movie and video game fanbases end up becoming extremely toxic when you go down the rabbit hole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Star Wars or Harry Potter. Religion just leads to the worst version of this kind of human behavior.
What's wrong is to make the absurd assumption that all religions are equally immoral, violent and crazy. You're saying all ideas are equally bad if they are contained in religions.
Sam Harris has repeatedly and correctly made the point that some religions are worse than others because they contain worse and more dangerous ideas than others. Jainism which forbids killing of any organism is not as dangerous as Islam which contains ideas of waging holy war against non believers and others.
You're being dogmatic when you're assuming they're all equally bad. You can't back up that statement, and it's absurd that they all just happen to be precisely as bad.
I don't think Sam or any of us care whether you're disappointed in him. You've taken a dogmatic position that is essentially indefensible because your claim is too absurd and impossible to confirm.
Religions differ in danger just like ideologies differ in danger. Religions are ideologies that feature magic.
Theists agree with atheists that 99.9% of the world’s religions are false. But they still believe in the one they were randomly born into. Atheists believe 100% of religions are false. I’m disappointed in Sam Harris and Bill Maher these days because I long defended them against charges of Islamophobia. I thought they criticized all religions equally. Then I realized they pull their punches when it came to Judaism, the religion their parents were in. I don’t think they’re secretly theists or anything (though Sam’s spiritual bend is kind of weird). I just think they’re just bigots.
If you scroll around, you can see a bunch of users in this thread defending the religion of their country/childhood while demonizing another one. For example, there’s an Indian guy explaining why Indian religions are better than Islam. That reflects the main nationalist tension in India. In person, I’ve heard exactly the same argument. Examples include:
* Arab Muslim born atheists who think Judaism is particularly evil
* Pakistani Muslim born atheists who think Hinduism is particularly bad
* Christian born atheists who think Islam is particularly bad
* American Jewish born atheists who think evangelical Christianity is particularly bad
* Israeli Jewish born atheists who think Islam is particularly bad.
* Catholic born atheists who think Protestantism is especially bad.
All of this reflects the main political tensions of the area where they grew up. It really seems like people just randomly get assigned to teams at birth and it’s hard to break away emotionally, even if you become an atheist and think all these religions are equally wrong. People still have a soft spot for the beliefs their parents hold no matter what their sense of logic and reason tells them. That’s why there’s so many non-believers who put up Christmas trees or check off Hindu on their census forms. Even atheists crave a sense of familiarity and culture. I think this frequently veers into bigotry though. Selectively leaving your family/country’s main religion out of your criticism is wrong.
That's a lot of text for saying nothing. I don't know that Harris is pulling punches against Judaism but he is of course right that Islam and Christianity is more damaging to the world.
The other you said seems to just be a fallacy. "People disagree which religion is the worst, therefore no religion can be worse than another."
Another fallacious argument I saw you make is "A theist can claim their holy text supports any idea, therefore it doesn't matter what the holy text says."
Another fallacious argument you seem to be making is "All religions are equally false, therefore they are equally bad."
As I said. You have taken a fucking absurd stance, and you can't support it. It's dogma. You didn't even get close to showing why one religion can't contain ideas and belief systems that are more dangerous than another's.
Now you're going to explain why islamism or nazism, since it's a quasi-religion, can't be more dangerous than Jainism or my Kindness religion, even though islamism and nazism call for genocide, totalitarianism and conquest, at their core. Explain that or honestly shut the fuck up, because you have completely failed to defend your point.
> Of course right that Islam and Christianity is more damaging to the world.
They're much larger religions so overall they are more damaging, but per capita it's roughly the same. People tend to focus on the largest religions, but when you really delve into the ideology and actions of religions around the world and across their history, they're all basically the same.
> The other you said seems to just be a fallacy. "People disagree which religion is the worst, therefore no religion can be worse than another."
Some can absolutely be worse than the others. I'm American, so I used to think Islam' the worst because of 9/11, and that Christianity' also awful because that's the most oppressive religious view where I live. But the more I read about world history, the more I realized they're all exactly the same. There's some good and a ton of bad in all of them. The idea that Buddhists would commit genocide against Hindus sounded ridiculous until the song Paper Planes became popular. That was M.I.A.'s family background and she talks about it a decent amount. I realized I didn't know anything about Sri Lanka. Or much about any country outside a few major ones that are taught in US schools.
> Another fallacious argument I saw you make is "A theist can claim their holy text supports any idea, therefore it doesn't matter what the holy text says."
I think all the holy texts basically say the same thing. I keep hearing that Islam says they need to kill non-believers and Jainism says they need to be peaceful. But if you actually read the text, Islam also says that Muslims are supposed to be peaceful and Jainism justifies self-defense. The whole Islam killing non-believers thing is supposedly in self-defense too. These religious texts are basically identical if you actually read them.
This makes sense from the perspective of game theory. ["Tit for Tat" is the classic winning strategy.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tit-for-tat.asp) This applies to computer programs, animals in the wild, and humans. If you step back and view religions as man made ideas, it makes sense that people around the world would figure out the same optimal strategy for survival and codify them into their holy books. It's the same reason pyramids are the same shape around the world. It's just the best shape to build something and have it not fall down for many years.
> Another fallacious argument you seem to be making is "All religions are equally false, therefore they are equally bad."
This isn't a rule. There is no evidence for any religion, and logic suggests they're all equally false. But one or more of them could be real if the evidence shows it. If Jesus, Vishnu, Zeus, etc. shows up I wouldn't be an atheist anymore. Separately, one religion could 100% be better or worse than the others. But the historical evidence suggests they're all exactly the same per capita and weighted for circumstances.
> As I said. You have taken a fucking absurd stance, and you can't support it. It's dogma. You didn't even get close to showing why one religion can't contain ideas and belief systems that are more dangerous than another's.
I can support it with evidence. I used to think the same thing as you until I put some extra effort into reading and research. Now I don't.
> Now you're going to explain why islamism or nazism, since it's a quasi-religion, can't be more dangerous than Jainism or my Kindness religion, even though islamism and nazism call for genocide, totalitarianism and conquest, at their core. Explain that or honestly shut the fuck up, because you have completely failed to defend your point.
I think you're either a bigot or you're not a bad person, but you're ignorant. If you zoom out from your local area at this time period in history and view humanity across the world over the past several thousand years, you'll see why I'm making this point. It's hard to do, but you'll get a much better understanding of the world if you put the effort in.
There's two major advantages if you do this. First, you get a much better understanding of your "enemy." Negotiation is basically just tactical empathy. If you zoom out and see the world as a game (as in game theory) or stage (as in "all the world's a stage," you can better predict what other people are going to do and counter it. Better yet is that life is much more predictable when you do this. Instead of seeing every conflict as an existential good vs. evil battle to the death, you can relax and see the world as similar people randomly assigned to different teams at birth who would compete or cooperate depending on what is optimal for them at a given moment in time. Enemies aren't evil and trying to kill you. They're exactly like you.
To answer your Islamism and Nazism question, I think those are both awful ideologies. Islamism means Islamic fundamentalism, not regular Islam though. The vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists, even though they're often trapped in countries ruled by fundamentalists. Nazism was a form of extreme German nationalism, but regular Germans were and are nice, normal people. Similarly, the most devout, nationalist Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. are psychopaths too. But the vast majority of them are just regular humans.
The funniest part about about fundamentalism is that no matter where you go in the world, they force women to wear basically the same outfit. Dark colors, minimally exposed skin, loose fitting garments, and some sort of scarf/hat/hair covering. Am I describing a nun? An orthodox Jewish woman? A Muslim woman? A devout Hindu woman? It's basically the same thing with some regional variations. Heck, costumes on shows like Game of Thrones, The Handmaid's Tale, etc. look like this too.
The more you dig into these religions, the more you recognize them as exactly the same thing except with some superficial differences. They're like two rival high school football teams in Texas. They hate each other, but to outsiders, they're completely interchangeable aside from geography and their mascot.
You need to learn how to cut to the chase. You have written an essay that barely addresses my accusations, and you still haven't supported your radical claim.
You're claiming all religion is equally damaging per capita, that they are "exactly the same". Your argument for this is roughly "There are bad things in every religion, therefore all religions are equally bad." It's fallacious.
You're confirming your fallacious argument concerning holy texts. You're claiming that if Islam calls for genocide and claims self defense, then that's the same as Jainism accepting self defense as legitimate. I guess you think the same of every legislation then. Ludicrous relativism. This point clearly shows your absurd thinking.
You assert that historical evidence suggests the extreme claim that all religions are "exactly the same" per capita, without presenting the evidence. I dismiss your assertion, without evidence.
After confirming your fallacies and re asserting your extreme claims without presenting evidence, you move on to write two paragraphs about how I'm wrong because I'm a bigot and ignorant. Ad hominem fallacy. And I think you're a pseudo intellectual clown, with your head too far up your ass, which I conclude you are from what you've said. I have demonstrated that I understand your position completely, and that I reject it precisely because I understand how fallacious and unfounded it is. Also if you're saying Nazis and Islamists aren't enemies trying to kill me, you can go fuck yourself.
Islamist countries are excellent evidence against your whole idea because they are theocratic shit holes, and yet Christianity is a bigger religion with greater influence but without as theocratic and as shitty countries. Islam is especially totalitarian, and it shows.
Regular Germans were despicable Nazis. But it's of course a false equivalency to equate the relation between Muslims and Islamists to Nazis and Germans, so there you go with another fallacy. There's only one kind of Nazi that is good. Nazism, just like religions, is a collection of ideas, and of course it matters what the ideas are.
Multiple religions using purity culture to oppress women, isn't getting you anywhere close to proving that all religions are "exactly the same".
You have read into history, discovered patterns and similarities. From that you have taken a space rocket to jump to the conclusion that all religions are exactly the same. Your reasoning may be longer than that, but it surely isn't more complicated or accurate. Accept it.
It should be obvious to you that your claim is unconfirmable, because it's impossible to know everything about all religions and possible religions, and to measure them to be exactly the same. But that's the position you've put yourself in, because you haven't thought it through nearly as well as you think.
At best you’re ignorant. At worst, you’re a bigot. You’re factually wrong, but are unwilling to study world history outside the narrative you were taught as a child. You’re going to be angry and miserable until you break away from this view.
It’s not hard if you want to change though. Just poke around on Wikipedia and talk to people of different religions. Or talk to atheists who have left different religions. Your view isn’t related to atheism. It’s related to nationalism.
If you’re not willing to say the religious tradition your parents and grandparents believed in is just as stupid and evil as the one their enemies believed in, you’re just going to perpetuate the cycle of intergenerational violence that has dominated Earth for the past several thousand years.
More ad hominem fallacies. No rebuttal, just a display of flawed reading comprehension. You're done, clown. You've had your half baked ideas refuted and been humiliated, so you lash out.
You're the one making the claim, and you've yet presented evidence that gets you an inch closer to proving it. But it's not just that you are wrong, it's that it's impossible to support your case. You're claiming you have confirmed the unconfirmable, so you're irrational. You had no response to this either, as expected.
You've again shown that you're just an arrogant clown, be better. Since you're just resorting to personal attacks, I'm blocking you.
I strongly disagree, yeah sure people of all walks of life can and will be violent but point me to the scripture in each religion where it calls for the death of non believers/ people who lost their faith and u will see a difference in teachings.
What was that quote...
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg
Although I think it is a human thing more than a religion thing. Any ideology can be used for violence against the minority group when your group becomes the majority.
Sure, the problem is theism, and even more, dogma, if dogma provides a benefit to a group this group will resort to violence to protect that privilege.
That being said.
Dogmas themselves have different values, and the content of the tenets and ideas represented in that dogma can also be judged.
They are all equally false, all equally dogmatic, but their ideas are not equally bad. They are all bad, but the quality of how bad some of those tenets are can be compared.
Dogma is certainly the core problem. It behooves us to remember that the largest majority atheist (at least on paper) country in history, the USSR, was quite brutal, to put it mildly.
>It’s both morally and factually wrong to say that any of these are better or worse than the others. The problem is theism, not the particular variant of theism.
Yes, a thousand times this. But I hope you know what that means OP?
It means it's your turn to tell that to all the people that post one-sided anti Islam stuff without applying the same standards to other religions. I'm getting pretty tired of it.
Mohammed was a real Person, Buddha was a real person, and Mahavir of Jaininism was a real person, some in Chrisstianity, Hinduism are real and some are not. Some are political as well, like in many Hindu myths, Indian kings are blessed by gods to rule, which is probably something a king would make up after victory to cement power.
While I agree that all religions inherently have the potential to cause harm and be an instigator for I justice and violence I strongly disagree that they are all equally violent as a majority.
While religions like Buddhism have had their share of violence in it's name, it is much more localized, almost never widespread and those conflicts usually aren't just religious. In fact Buddhism does have peace has one of it's core teachings.
Compare this to a religion like Islam that has the goal to spread the religion through violent conquest, persecution of other religions, oppression of women, justification for slavery and rape etc. As a core part of their religious text and you'll see what the differences are. How many truly peaceful, just and stable Muslim countries can you name compared to those that are always caught in some sort of violence? Martyrdom is a core part of their religion, to die during jihad is seen as a good thing, it is explicitly stated in numerous religious texts.
Of course this doesn't mean all Buddhists are peaceful and good and that every Buddhist country is amazing. And this also doesn't mean that there aren't peaceful and just Muslim countries and good Muslims. But there is a very staggering difference in the percentages of who's peaceful and who's not on both religions, and that's not a bug it's a feature
I think that the religious texts of Buddhism and Islam are similar in that they have parts that justify violence and parts that justify peace. They’re no different from modern day epics like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc. The problem is that the fandoms are insane and they use these works of fiction as rallying calls to violence.
Today Islam is the biggest and most violent religion, depending on how we classify the religions. But if we go back 1000 years, Islam was relatively peaceful and Christianity was ultra-violent. We can do that for pretty much every religion. The political and economic circumstances of a given time matter more than the fairy tale the followers rally around.
The big problem is when two different religious groups with different worldviews share the same land and fight over control of the same resources. They tend to butt heads, and Islam happens to be in many of those situations today. Muslim countries happen to control a ton of oil, which is the most important resource, on the planet. That gives them power and makes them a target.
I actually think it makes sense for humans to find ways to cooperate or fight over natural resources. If there’s one loaf of bread and either your family starves or someone else’s family starves, you have no choice but to fight. But if you find out a way to cooperate, you can grow more food and feed everyone. But time is the limited resource and you might starve in the meantime. The silly part about religion is that people fight over it, even when economic circumstances don’t favor fighting. People don’t understand economics, they understand stories. People stubbornly follow stories even if those stories turn out to be fairy tales.
Buddhism wasn't supposed to be a religion, it was a refutation of religion. But those who came after Buddha and wanted to perpetuate it kept adding the trappings of religion back in. What it is today is apmost unrecognizable compared to what it was supposed to be.
I believe that thoughts matter, dogma matters, and that assuming all religions are somehow equally peaceful or violent or abusive is false equivalency.
The truth is that some are worse in some aspects and that those aspects and flaws seem to change over time. Religions and cultures are highly dynamic systems.
It's complicated.
I disagree. While we can certainly judge by what they teach, the magnitude of harm each religion does. And from that the worst and best of them.
It is also equally true that all religions are inherently harmful.
The same way that not all dictators are evil. But having a dictator at all is in itself a critical systemic flaw.
If they can make you believe in absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities.
It's very dangerous that any institution can claim to be independent of fact, while also dictating people's morals and perception of reality.
If they can do that, up can be down. Murder righteous. Rape honorable. Because it doesn't matter what reality is, when 'god' says otherwise.
All religions regardless of teachings, by nature of being faith based, compromise a person's ability to reason. To decide right from wrong. Or to decide for themselves at all.
And that makes them tools by the charismatic and unscrupulous.
All religions are flawed, but they aren't flawed in the same way, to the same extent and do not have the same e capacity to modernize/transform.
For instance, out of 4 Dharmic religions (religions originated in India region), Hinduism is clearly worst, due to casteism. All the flaws/problems other dharmic religions (Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) have, still makes them better religion than Hinduism.
Similarly, while Hinduism has awful practices that discriminate among its own people (casteism, untouchables), other religions, specifically Islam, has practices and role model that discriminate and distrust against people of other religions. All religions aren't same, and they are modernizing at different rates. A decade from things would look differently. LLet's not go for simple and wrong approac of everyone is same.
Concerning Christianity and Islam, I will say that the texts of Christianity seem to fit with modern morals way better. Sure, the old testament sucks, but the new testament is completely different. Islam has no new testament. The quran is just as bad as the old testament.
This is inherently why all organized religion is bad. "Only 5% of our teachers become mass murderers in this school!" If someone said that, you'd be asking questions...
That's it. As soon as they take power, they become a problem.
Have Buddhists been the instigators of major religious conflicts? - or has buddhist violence been in response to violence inflicted on them by other cults first? Genuinely curious to know... I'm not sure about hinduism in south asia, but the vast majority of christian and islamic violence, warfare and conquest globally has been due to christian and islamic supremacism and they have instigated it themselves simply by coming into contact with unbelievers.
Take a look at Sri Lanka and Myanmar
Those are ethnic conflicts though, Sri Lankan Tamils and Native Sri Lankans have had violence and issue of Autonomy, and it was after major deal with India which included refugee intake, and a dictator who India agreed to look away from his abuse of power in return for a non secretarian government did it stop.
Did islam take territories in Sri Lanka and Myanmar peacefully? - or is it more complicated than that?
Idk about Sri lanka but the Rohingyas muslims of Myanmar were not that much of a peaceful community in themselves.... (You may do your research on that yourself) In return the population of the country made the whole of ethnic group to be out of the country. And yea the occupation of territory becomes kinda useless in this matter if you do your research.
Surely you can do better than 'do your research on that yourself'
Aye aye It's not something I said for you being lazy or something. It's just that it's sensetive content which i don't want to read again to be able to quote.
Fair enough then
What should one look at? SL conflict was between ethnic group Tamil vs Sri Lankan govt. It wasn't religious fight. Myanmar is a military ruled country, military oppressed every group, specially muslims. Since Muslims live on the western/northern border and have been trying to join hands with neighbouring Muslim country (Bangladesh currently, formerly Islamic republic of Pakistan), military junta targeted them. Go back to the colonial era, and you will see that Muslim side wasn't keen to be part of a non-muslim country. It isn't a simple majority oppressing minority.
Very well said.
> Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are all equally false religions whose followers are equally peaceful as minorities and equally violent as a majority That's factually incorrect. We don't need to worry about Jain suicide bombers, for example. In fact, the more extreme you take the Jain doctrine literally, the less we need to worry about you. Now do I agree that *overall* theism can bring out the worst in people? Of course. But let's not lower ourselves to the baseless overgeneralizing we hear only too much on the other side.
> [Jains have similar views with Hindus that violence in self-defence can be justified, and that a soldier who kills enemies in combat is performing a legitimate duty. Jain communities accepted the use of military power for their defence; there were Jain monarchs, military commanders, and soldiers.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism) Jainism is no different from any other religion. All of them say that violence is bad, but acceptable in self-defense. The question then becomes what is considered defense? No one wants to think they’re acting offensively. For example, the U.S. rebranded the Department of War to Department of Defense. I think most members of all religions are broadly peaceful. Most humans are peaceful overall. But it’s common within religions to form smaller sects that interpret doctrine differently. So while one Jain individual or sect might choose non-violence even if it results in their death, another might justify violence as self defense. I popped over to the Jainism sub for a moment to double check and there is disagreement on this topic. This gets at the heart of the problem with using religion as a moral guide. They’re not objective truths created by a god. They’re collections of stories and suggestions created by humans. You can interpret them however you want and use them to justify whatever you want. They’re just story books created by people and interpreted by other people. As such, I think the percentage of culturally religious people, devout believers, and violent extremists is roughly the same in all religions. What varies is the circumstances members of a given religion find themselves in at a given point of human history. I don’t believe in god, only humans. And as far as I can tell, human nature is the same everywhere. As much as fans of rival NFL or NBA teams hate this comparison, they’re basically all the same.
>What varies is the circumstances members of a given religion find themselves in at a given point of human history. I don’t believe in god, only humans. And as far as I can tell, human nature is the same everywhere. I read over this initially, but now it made me discover that apparently, my euro's aren't good enough for Reddit to buy gold. And I'm far too lazy to join the contributor program, that just seems like a lot of work. But please consider yourself gilded, if only in spirit. I hope this will compensate for my lack of compatible banking system: There's a concept in science called [Explanatory Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explanatory_power), it is an extra property, apart from being true or false, that a given statement, hypothesis or theory has. Your above statement has enough explanatory power to built entire philosophies on top of it. Whenever people reason from the assumption your statement is false, they will sooner or later find themselves drowning in paradoxes. If religions are false, does that mean that MLK was wrong? How come there are Muslim's feeding the hungry and Christians calling for the blood of the non-believers? How can they be perpetrators and victims at the same time? Who are the bad guys? Who are the good guys? Why don´t they behave like others of their supposed kind? But when they reason from the assumption your statement is true, all these paradoxes will dissolve like snow in the sun. Because it allows for the complexities we see around us. It's no longer hard to see why it is what it is when we assume human nature to be homogeneous and circumstances to be the main deciding factor. As I said, its explanatory power is awesome. But still, this only tells us what it is, not what we should do... So imagine I'm a politician in need of a fundamental principle to base my policies on. Given the explanatory power discussed earlier I decide to go with the above. What would be the first prescriptive element we could distill from it? What conclusion does it inevitably lead to? It would lead to the the conclusion that we *cannot and should not ever discriminate*. It leads to the conclusion that we should judge individuals by their actions, not merely by the group they belong to. It leads to the conclusion that for any law to be fair, it must be applied to everyone equally. In short, it will lead to truly humanistic, truly egalitarian policies. All this follows from the simple observation you made. And I'd vote for a politician like that. As I expected a lot of people choose to debate you on this. By arguing that it is evidently true that Buddhists aren't bombing middle eastern town squares and the like. So I thought I'd let you know that there is at least someone who agrees and tries to see the bigger picture with you. Again, hang in there.
> Jainism is no different from any other religion. All of them say that violence is bad, but acceptable in self-defense. First of all, not every religion says violence is bad. Some even mandate it in their doctrines against non-believers. So yes, there is a difference Second, virtually every secular society recognizes the right to self-defense. This principle is embedded in their legal systems and is considered a fundamental human right. The justification is straightforward: individuals have the inherent right to protect themselves from harm.
My point is that all these texts are made up nonsense and believers and non-believers can interpret them however they want. If you’re an atheist and want to make the case that the Torah, Bible, Quran, etc. support offensive violence against non-believers, you can easily do that. If you’re a believer, you can use these texts to justify self-defense and then use violence however you want. If you’re a believer, you can also interpret these books as supportive of peace and non-violence. > [While numerous scholars explain Quranic phrases on violence to be only in the context of a defensive response to oppression; violent groups have interpreted verses to endorse their violent actions and made the Quran's teachings on violence and war a topic of vigorous debate, though it is clear that the Quran does not condone violence with no reason](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_the_Quran) A drug that heals you from a disease has an effect. A poison that makes you sick also has an effect. Meanwhile, a placebo doesn’t have any effect at all. It’s just nonsense. There’s a placebo effect where if you want to imagine a pill as a medicine, you feel better. If you imagine it as a poison, you feel worse. Religious texts have no power. They’re just placebos that people can interpret however they want. As for secular societies recognizing self-defense, that’s my whole point. All humans are the same regardless of religion. Conflicts are dictated by access to natural resources and game theory, not made up stories. Religions aren’t medicine or poison. They’re just placebos that create a placebo effect. This is why I find the idea that Islam is uniquely violent or that Jainism is uniquely non-violent to be silly and historically inaccurate. The texts can be interpreted however you want, and you can use them to justify any action as evil or righteous. There is no god and these story books were created by regular humans.
>They’re collections of stories and suggestions created by humans. You can interpret them however you want and use them to justify whatever you want Then there is Faith. Which is to say, once you've decided on your personal interpretation of cherry picked sections of religious doctrine, you must now consider this point of view to be, without a shadow of doubt, the inviolable Will of God. Which implies that anyone voicing a different point of view isn't just wrong, they are an enemy of God. To best serve God it follows that you should "do what must be done" to silence the dissent. It's dirty work but the end justifies the means. All of the above follows from Faith itself, regardless of the specifics of your belief. It's hard to respect other points of view when you're not allowed to doubt your own.
Right, that’s why these religions all suck. But it’s the process of faith that leads to violence, not the specific book they based their faith upon. It’s sort of like how all movie and video game fanbases end up becoming extremely toxic when you go down the rabbit hole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Star Wars or Harry Potter. Religion just leads to the worst version of this kind of human behavior.
What's wrong is to make the absurd assumption that all religions are equally immoral, violent and crazy. You're saying all ideas are equally bad if they are contained in religions. Sam Harris has repeatedly and correctly made the point that some religions are worse than others because they contain worse and more dangerous ideas than others. Jainism which forbids killing of any organism is not as dangerous as Islam which contains ideas of waging holy war against non believers and others. You're being dogmatic when you're assuming they're all equally bad. You can't back up that statement, and it's absurd that they all just happen to be precisely as bad.
I just wrote out a comment about Jainism in response to another user in this thread. As for Sam Harris, I’m deeply disappointed in him.
I don't think Sam or any of us care whether you're disappointed in him. You've taken a dogmatic position that is essentially indefensible because your claim is too absurd and impossible to confirm. Religions differ in danger just like ideologies differ in danger. Religions are ideologies that feature magic.
Theists agree with atheists that 99.9% of the world’s religions are false. But they still believe in the one they were randomly born into. Atheists believe 100% of religions are false. I’m disappointed in Sam Harris and Bill Maher these days because I long defended them against charges of Islamophobia. I thought they criticized all religions equally. Then I realized they pull their punches when it came to Judaism, the religion their parents were in. I don’t think they’re secretly theists or anything (though Sam’s spiritual bend is kind of weird). I just think they’re just bigots. If you scroll around, you can see a bunch of users in this thread defending the religion of their country/childhood while demonizing another one. For example, there’s an Indian guy explaining why Indian religions are better than Islam. That reflects the main nationalist tension in India. In person, I’ve heard exactly the same argument. Examples include: * Arab Muslim born atheists who think Judaism is particularly evil * Pakistani Muslim born atheists who think Hinduism is particularly bad * Christian born atheists who think Islam is particularly bad * American Jewish born atheists who think evangelical Christianity is particularly bad * Israeli Jewish born atheists who think Islam is particularly bad. * Catholic born atheists who think Protestantism is especially bad. All of this reflects the main political tensions of the area where they grew up. It really seems like people just randomly get assigned to teams at birth and it’s hard to break away emotionally, even if you become an atheist and think all these religions are equally wrong. People still have a soft spot for the beliefs their parents hold no matter what their sense of logic and reason tells them. That’s why there’s so many non-believers who put up Christmas trees or check off Hindu on their census forms. Even atheists crave a sense of familiarity and culture. I think this frequently veers into bigotry though. Selectively leaving your family/country’s main religion out of your criticism is wrong.
That's a lot of text for saying nothing. I don't know that Harris is pulling punches against Judaism but he is of course right that Islam and Christianity is more damaging to the world. The other you said seems to just be a fallacy. "People disagree which religion is the worst, therefore no religion can be worse than another." Another fallacious argument I saw you make is "A theist can claim their holy text supports any idea, therefore it doesn't matter what the holy text says." Another fallacious argument you seem to be making is "All religions are equally false, therefore they are equally bad." As I said. You have taken a fucking absurd stance, and you can't support it. It's dogma. You didn't even get close to showing why one religion can't contain ideas and belief systems that are more dangerous than another's. Now you're going to explain why islamism or nazism, since it's a quasi-religion, can't be more dangerous than Jainism or my Kindness religion, even though islamism and nazism call for genocide, totalitarianism and conquest, at their core. Explain that or honestly shut the fuck up, because you have completely failed to defend your point.
> Of course right that Islam and Christianity is more damaging to the world. They're much larger religions so overall they are more damaging, but per capita it's roughly the same. People tend to focus on the largest religions, but when you really delve into the ideology and actions of religions around the world and across their history, they're all basically the same. > The other you said seems to just be a fallacy. "People disagree which religion is the worst, therefore no religion can be worse than another." Some can absolutely be worse than the others. I'm American, so I used to think Islam' the worst because of 9/11, and that Christianity' also awful because that's the most oppressive religious view where I live. But the more I read about world history, the more I realized they're all exactly the same. There's some good and a ton of bad in all of them. The idea that Buddhists would commit genocide against Hindus sounded ridiculous until the song Paper Planes became popular. That was M.I.A.'s family background and she talks about it a decent amount. I realized I didn't know anything about Sri Lanka. Or much about any country outside a few major ones that are taught in US schools. > Another fallacious argument I saw you make is "A theist can claim their holy text supports any idea, therefore it doesn't matter what the holy text says." I think all the holy texts basically say the same thing. I keep hearing that Islam says they need to kill non-believers and Jainism says they need to be peaceful. But if you actually read the text, Islam also says that Muslims are supposed to be peaceful and Jainism justifies self-defense. The whole Islam killing non-believers thing is supposedly in self-defense too. These religious texts are basically identical if you actually read them. This makes sense from the perspective of game theory. ["Tit for Tat" is the classic winning strategy.](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/tit-for-tat.asp) This applies to computer programs, animals in the wild, and humans. If you step back and view religions as man made ideas, it makes sense that people around the world would figure out the same optimal strategy for survival and codify them into their holy books. It's the same reason pyramids are the same shape around the world. It's just the best shape to build something and have it not fall down for many years. > Another fallacious argument you seem to be making is "All religions are equally false, therefore they are equally bad." This isn't a rule. There is no evidence for any religion, and logic suggests they're all equally false. But one or more of them could be real if the evidence shows it. If Jesus, Vishnu, Zeus, etc. shows up I wouldn't be an atheist anymore. Separately, one religion could 100% be better or worse than the others. But the historical evidence suggests they're all exactly the same per capita and weighted for circumstances. > As I said. You have taken a fucking absurd stance, and you can't support it. It's dogma. You didn't even get close to showing why one religion can't contain ideas and belief systems that are more dangerous than another's. I can support it with evidence. I used to think the same thing as you until I put some extra effort into reading and research. Now I don't. > Now you're going to explain why islamism or nazism, since it's a quasi-religion, can't be more dangerous than Jainism or my Kindness religion, even though islamism and nazism call for genocide, totalitarianism and conquest, at their core. Explain that or honestly shut the fuck up, because you have completely failed to defend your point. I think you're either a bigot or you're not a bad person, but you're ignorant. If you zoom out from your local area at this time period in history and view humanity across the world over the past several thousand years, you'll see why I'm making this point. It's hard to do, but you'll get a much better understanding of the world if you put the effort in. There's two major advantages if you do this. First, you get a much better understanding of your "enemy." Negotiation is basically just tactical empathy. If you zoom out and see the world as a game (as in game theory) or stage (as in "all the world's a stage," you can better predict what other people are going to do and counter it. Better yet is that life is much more predictable when you do this. Instead of seeing every conflict as an existential good vs. evil battle to the death, you can relax and see the world as similar people randomly assigned to different teams at birth who would compete or cooperate depending on what is optimal for them at a given moment in time. Enemies aren't evil and trying to kill you. They're exactly like you. To answer your Islamism and Nazism question, I think those are both awful ideologies. Islamism means Islamic fundamentalism, not regular Islam though. The vast majority of Muslims are not fundamentalists, even though they're often trapped in countries ruled by fundamentalists. Nazism was a form of extreme German nationalism, but regular Germans were and are nice, normal people. Similarly, the most devout, nationalist Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. are psychopaths too. But the vast majority of them are just regular humans. The funniest part about about fundamentalism is that no matter where you go in the world, they force women to wear basically the same outfit. Dark colors, minimally exposed skin, loose fitting garments, and some sort of scarf/hat/hair covering. Am I describing a nun? An orthodox Jewish woman? A Muslim woman? A devout Hindu woman? It's basically the same thing with some regional variations. Heck, costumes on shows like Game of Thrones, The Handmaid's Tale, etc. look like this too. The more you dig into these religions, the more you recognize them as exactly the same thing except with some superficial differences. They're like two rival high school football teams in Texas. They hate each other, but to outsiders, they're completely interchangeable aside from geography and their mascot.
You need to learn how to cut to the chase. You have written an essay that barely addresses my accusations, and you still haven't supported your radical claim. You're claiming all religion is equally damaging per capita, that they are "exactly the same". Your argument for this is roughly "There are bad things in every religion, therefore all religions are equally bad." It's fallacious. You're confirming your fallacious argument concerning holy texts. You're claiming that if Islam calls for genocide and claims self defense, then that's the same as Jainism accepting self defense as legitimate. I guess you think the same of every legislation then. Ludicrous relativism. This point clearly shows your absurd thinking. You assert that historical evidence suggests the extreme claim that all religions are "exactly the same" per capita, without presenting the evidence. I dismiss your assertion, without evidence. After confirming your fallacies and re asserting your extreme claims without presenting evidence, you move on to write two paragraphs about how I'm wrong because I'm a bigot and ignorant. Ad hominem fallacy. And I think you're a pseudo intellectual clown, with your head too far up your ass, which I conclude you are from what you've said. I have demonstrated that I understand your position completely, and that I reject it precisely because I understand how fallacious and unfounded it is. Also if you're saying Nazis and Islamists aren't enemies trying to kill me, you can go fuck yourself. Islamist countries are excellent evidence against your whole idea because they are theocratic shit holes, and yet Christianity is a bigger religion with greater influence but without as theocratic and as shitty countries. Islam is especially totalitarian, and it shows. Regular Germans were despicable Nazis. But it's of course a false equivalency to equate the relation between Muslims and Islamists to Nazis and Germans, so there you go with another fallacy. There's only one kind of Nazi that is good. Nazism, just like religions, is a collection of ideas, and of course it matters what the ideas are. Multiple religions using purity culture to oppress women, isn't getting you anywhere close to proving that all religions are "exactly the same". You have read into history, discovered patterns and similarities. From that you have taken a space rocket to jump to the conclusion that all religions are exactly the same. Your reasoning may be longer than that, but it surely isn't more complicated or accurate. Accept it. It should be obvious to you that your claim is unconfirmable, because it's impossible to know everything about all religions and possible religions, and to measure them to be exactly the same. But that's the position you've put yourself in, because you haven't thought it through nearly as well as you think.
At best you’re ignorant. At worst, you’re a bigot. You’re factually wrong, but are unwilling to study world history outside the narrative you were taught as a child. You’re going to be angry and miserable until you break away from this view. It’s not hard if you want to change though. Just poke around on Wikipedia and talk to people of different religions. Or talk to atheists who have left different religions. Your view isn’t related to atheism. It’s related to nationalism. If you’re not willing to say the religious tradition your parents and grandparents believed in is just as stupid and evil as the one their enemies believed in, you’re just going to perpetuate the cycle of intergenerational violence that has dominated Earth for the past several thousand years.
More ad hominem fallacies. No rebuttal, just a display of flawed reading comprehension. You're done, clown. You've had your half baked ideas refuted and been humiliated, so you lash out. You're the one making the claim, and you've yet presented evidence that gets you an inch closer to proving it. But it's not just that you are wrong, it's that it's impossible to support your case. You're claiming you have confirmed the unconfirmable, so you're irrational. You had no response to this either, as expected. You've again shown that you're just an arrogant clown, be better. Since you're just resorting to personal attacks, I'm blocking you.
all these cults provide excuses for violence.
I strongly disagree, yeah sure people of all walks of life can and will be violent but point me to the scripture in each religion where it calls for the death of non believers/ people who lost their faith and u will see a difference in teachings.
What was that quote... “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” - Steven Weinberg Although I think it is a human thing more than a religion thing. Any ideology can be used for violence against the minority group when your group becomes the majority.
Bingo!! Exactly, well said! I've been saying this for years now!
Sure, the problem is theism, and even more, dogma, if dogma provides a benefit to a group this group will resort to violence to protect that privilege. That being said. Dogmas themselves have different values, and the content of the tenets and ideas represented in that dogma can also be judged. They are all equally false, all equally dogmatic, but their ideas are not equally bad. They are all bad, but the quality of how bad some of those tenets are can be compared.
Dogma is certainly the core problem. It behooves us to remember that the largest majority atheist (at least on paper) country in history, the USSR, was quite brutal, to put it mildly.
Willfully living outside of reality, logic, perceptions, and group morality is always a recipe for disaster.
>It’s both morally and factually wrong to say that any of these are better or worse than the others. The problem is theism, not the particular variant of theism. Yes, a thousand times this. But I hope you know what that means OP? It means it's your turn to tell that to all the people that post one-sided anti Islam stuff without applying the same standards to other religions. I'm getting pretty tired of it.
Mohammed was a real Person, Buddha was a real person, and Mahavir of Jaininism was a real person, some in Chrisstianity, Hinduism are real and some are not. Some are political as well, like in many Hindu myths, Indian kings are blessed by gods to rule, which is probably something a king would make up after victory to cement power.
It is the human ego that wants control of others. It could be any belief system or not.
While I agree that all religions inherently have the potential to cause harm and be an instigator for I justice and violence I strongly disagree that they are all equally violent as a majority. While religions like Buddhism have had their share of violence in it's name, it is much more localized, almost never widespread and those conflicts usually aren't just religious. In fact Buddhism does have peace has one of it's core teachings. Compare this to a religion like Islam that has the goal to spread the religion through violent conquest, persecution of other religions, oppression of women, justification for slavery and rape etc. As a core part of their religious text and you'll see what the differences are. How many truly peaceful, just and stable Muslim countries can you name compared to those that are always caught in some sort of violence? Martyrdom is a core part of their religion, to die during jihad is seen as a good thing, it is explicitly stated in numerous religious texts. Of course this doesn't mean all Buddhists are peaceful and good and that every Buddhist country is amazing. And this also doesn't mean that there aren't peaceful and just Muslim countries and good Muslims. But there is a very staggering difference in the percentages of who's peaceful and who's not on both religions, and that's not a bug it's a feature
I think that the religious texts of Buddhism and Islam are similar in that they have parts that justify violence and parts that justify peace. They’re no different from modern day epics like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc. The problem is that the fandoms are insane and they use these works of fiction as rallying calls to violence. Today Islam is the biggest and most violent religion, depending on how we classify the religions. But if we go back 1000 years, Islam was relatively peaceful and Christianity was ultra-violent. We can do that for pretty much every religion. The political and economic circumstances of a given time matter more than the fairy tale the followers rally around. The big problem is when two different religious groups with different worldviews share the same land and fight over control of the same resources. They tend to butt heads, and Islam happens to be in many of those situations today. Muslim countries happen to control a ton of oil, which is the most important resource, on the planet. That gives them power and makes them a target. I actually think it makes sense for humans to find ways to cooperate or fight over natural resources. If there’s one loaf of bread and either your family starves or someone else’s family starves, you have no choice but to fight. But if you find out a way to cooperate, you can grow more food and feed everyone. But time is the limited resource and you might starve in the meantime. The silly part about religion is that people fight over it, even when economic circumstances don’t favor fighting. People don’t understand economics, they understand stories. People stubbornly follow stories even if those stories turn out to be fairy tales.
Buddhism wasn't supposed to be a religion, it was a refutation of religion. But those who came after Buddha and wanted to perpetuate it kept adding the trappings of religion back in. What it is today is apmost unrecognizable compared to what it was supposed to be.
What a politically correct, yet factually incorrect thing to say.
I wrote out a few comments in this thread if you want to see some of my arguments. I compared Jainism and Islam in my most recent one.
I believe that thoughts matter, dogma matters, and that assuming all religions are somehow equally peaceful or violent or abusive is false equivalency. The truth is that some are worse in some aspects and that those aspects and flaws seem to change over time. Religions and cultures are highly dynamic systems. It's complicated.
I disagree. While we can certainly judge by what they teach, the magnitude of harm each religion does. And from that the worst and best of them. It is also equally true that all religions are inherently harmful. The same way that not all dictators are evil. But having a dictator at all is in itself a critical systemic flaw. If they can make you believe in absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities. It's very dangerous that any institution can claim to be independent of fact, while also dictating people's morals and perception of reality. If they can do that, up can be down. Murder righteous. Rape honorable. Because it doesn't matter what reality is, when 'god' says otherwise. All religions regardless of teachings, by nature of being faith based, compromise a person's ability to reason. To decide right from wrong. Or to decide for themselves at all. And that makes them tools by the charismatic and unscrupulous.
All religions are flawed, but they aren't flawed in the same way, to the same extent and do not have the same e capacity to modernize/transform. For instance, out of 4 Dharmic religions (religions originated in India region), Hinduism is clearly worst, due to casteism. All the flaws/problems other dharmic religions (Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) have, still makes them better religion than Hinduism. Similarly, while Hinduism has awful practices that discriminate among its own people (casteism, untouchables), other religions, specifically Islam, has practices and role model that discriminate and distrust against people of other religions. All religions aren't same, and they are modernizing at different rates. A decade from things would look differently. LLet's not go for simple and wrong approac of everyone is same.
Concerning Christianity and Islam, I will say that the texts of Christianity seem to fit with modern morals way better. Sure, the old testament sucks, but the new testament is completely different. Islam has no new testament. The quran is just as bad as the old testament.