Manchester Arena - ongoing incident 22/5

You actually confirm my point. I have spoken to many religious people in my life and I found that there is no discussion possible.
"Being gay (or live like it)" is a good example. It is considered as wrong, per definition, based on nothing. When I ask what is behind that thought, I have never gotten an explanation other than "this book says so" or "my god says so". Therefore they are saying "My view on life and subjects is defined by religion". I just agree with them that that is, unfortunately, true.

To stay on topic, have you heard the statements or read the notes of all the previous suicide bombers? Listen to what they say. And have you heard the statements of the people and police and government of throwing gays off rooftops in Mosul and the stick beating of gays in Atjeh? If you can find any other reasoning, anywhere, than religion , please let me know. Don't underestimate how their identity is formed by religion.

So ISIS has quite the freedom to organize public events like that in these countries.

My point is, saying: "you can't blame the reason out of which someone committed this crime, because other people make up different gods who are kind, or just say that their god thinks something else" is by no means the solution. In fact, thinking like that means you are part of the problem.

You should never hold a god responsible for your character or actions.

Unfortunately, while each of our personal experiences of dealing with religious people might be significant in defining *our* views, it might not actually be a fair representation of how religious people as a whole behave.

This is why anecdotal evidence, while emotionally powerful, isn't always very reliable.

Furthermore, it's not often that easy to see the complexities going beneath the surface of other people; as the saying goes, we judge ourselves on our intentions, and others on their actions.

I dare say that if you've chatted about belief with religious people in as abrasive/condescending a manner as you've done here, they might not have been as forthcoming about their views, or as open to yours as you might have liked.

Maybe u should read a little on ISIS. I think u will find its less 'organise' and more 'force'

Oh, I know it's "force".

No room for reasoning. God says so, so it's true.

The problem is that everybody says something else about what god says, so nobody is to blame.

Of course there were and are Protestant Nationalists and Catholic Unionists, that's obvious.

But that of itself doesn't mean that sectarianism in Northern Ireland wasn't (and for that matter still isn't) mixed in with the religious divide.

Anyone who grew up in Northern Ireland (and I speak as someone who did, so to quote you, I know what I'm talking about) knows full well that whether or not deep down it actually is about religion, it's blatently obvious that at least in part it has been made to be about religion - one only needs to recall the number of times there have been flashpoints and trouble on parade routes, or churches attacked, to realise that. So to say it wasn't about religion is just simply untrue.

Offers partial explanation for, not justifies. Don't put words in people's mouths.

The only way reason religion was dragged into the equation was that the indigenous population were Catholic and the settlers were protestant...

Clearly we're not going to see eye to eye here. In my opinion, your continued suggestion that those who are strongly religious have somehow less "evolved/developed" minds than your superior atheist mind is a fairly unfortunate way of thinking about your fellow human beings.

The idea that your views on the world are somehow more rational & 'true' because you aren't religious is not as simple as the caricature you have painted of the religious bigots and enlightened atheists; Firstly many of the things we are talking about aren't issues defined simply by objective facts, but they are value judgements defined by many things beyond religion. There are, after all, homophobic people who aren't religious. Secondly, your upbringing will be defined hugely by all aspects of your parents; your example might equally work talking about workers' rights and socialist parents, or football and Man Utd fan parents and on and on. Thirdly, studies show that people simply aren't all that rational anyway (Freakonomics did an episode about how people's views changed when presented with different facts).

Within most aspects of human life there is the bell curve; amongst 'pro-life' a tiny number of people will blow up abortion clinics; within football fans a tiny number will beat up fans from other teams; within animal rights activism a tiny number will dig up human graves, and so on... Acting as though these ideas should be defined by the worst human actions is disingenuous and unfair on the vast majority who are nothing like this, just like suggesting that someone can be boiled down simply to the religion they believe in.

Finally, as a clear example of not wanting parts of your identity to be defined by those so different from yourself; I would hate for other people's views on atheists to be defined by your posts here today. I dare say you would think the same way about my posts.

The IRA never used suicide bombers.........

We know exactly what kind of ideology this murderer is, however keep hearing reports even when the worst happened as it did last night, brings out the best in other people, with all sectors of society doing brilliant altruistic deeds.