Missing. The. Point.

So one might be tempted to conclude that there is just 1 specific religion you hate. The graph illustrates this stupidity.

All of Buddhism, Hinduism and islam are more “good” than Christianity on your graph. The one thing those 3 religions have in common is slavery.

Judaism is “neutral” on the slave issue, one the one hand you could correctly claim that to correctly carry out Jewish rituals you need slaves, but you would also be correct in saying that contemporary Jews obviously don’t have slaves.

This would be opposed to muslims, that have religiously sanctified slaves in many countries, including Sudan, Saudi arabia, Dubai, and really most of the gulf countries.

India may not be a slave-hoarding society per-se, but you might want to look up exactly what the word “dalit” means. Open slavery of Dalits was eliminated in India, like in the middle east, by British forces implanting Christianity in that country (the arabs simply re-instituted slavery when the British left).

Why not make the graph illustrate the evident historical truth ? Christianity created the very concept that we understand as freedom. Christianity built the countries we live in. It is firmly on the side of good.

And let’s just say that it would be best to shut up about just how good most religions are, given historical behavior. Muslims are the worst by far, islam started, spread and lives by massacres even today. slavery, “raids” (religiously sanctioned stealing and enslaving attacks on unexpecting villagers) are an essential component of islam, and were carried out by the center of islam, the “prophet”) but that doesn’t change that Buddhists have ample blood on their hands (such as dozens of massacres on Thai populations) and so do Hindus.

-> cannot be proven to be consistent
-> inconsistent

For any non-trivial theory. So “Non-contradictory” is a bit inaccurate, after all nothing worth knowing is non-contradictory (and to be honest, certainly Richard Dawkins isn’t, have you read his books ?)

What I want to know is where can I get access to these “sheep” teachings you allude to.

Also, @conor: no religious groups in Ireland lobbied for this legislation and the reaction to it has been virulent amongst Christians

Firstly, you’ve misclassified Dawkins. He’s not actually an atheist – see “The God Delusion” for his exact position (basically, he takes a probabilistic view of things, so he’s technically an agnostic – though for practical purposes, he thinks the probabilities are such that he’s closer to atheist than classic agnostic).

Second, while I’d agree he inflames the theists, I wonder is that reason enough to classify him as unhelpful – his books and rationalisations *are* helpful to those who are receptive to them. And those people may or may not go on to make his arguments again, but in a less direct, more soothing manner..

Maybe I’m taking humour too seriously, but it’s really strange to see Dawkins categorised as being as evil as the worst of the major religions, and overlapping with Scientology.