'When I say to people that religion is all a big and annoying con, they sometimes respond with, 'well who are we supposed to believe in'? and I always respond;
In yourselves!'

dear od dear Altrav. Believe in yourself! And you deny Islamic terrorist flew into the twin towers. You have to be kidding. I thought you had a few more brains than such nonsense. Anyone with any sense of truth knows humans are corrupt by nature. Among the worst are god deniers. Planned parenthood murderers believe in themselves.

Humans are corrupt by society which keeps
bad nature in check.

Runner, WTF, are you locked in the same rubber room as NMN?
Instead of giving us old and well trodden drivel we have heard again and again from the sheeple like yourself, how about coming back to me with actual and obvious info as to why you reckon I'm full of sh!t.
I actually have an inquisitive mind that's always considering the rest of the 'what if's', and not the mindless explanations which are there for everyone to see, so don't need further conversations.
You see your just another un-informed fool out there, if you want to redeem yourself, why don't you look up who financed the war between England and France, or who owns and runs the banks and the financial system in the world.
I do, so keep your sh!tty dim-witted, arrogant, un-informed opinions to yourself until you have done some research.
Until then your comments on the topic I refer to are moot.
And stop labeling me with all these loser's, you're not the person to judge me or anyone else for that matter.
You seem far too immature and capricious, to be taken seriously.
So then I tell you what, keep playing with NMN in that rubber room, and if you're a good boy we'll see if we will read what you might have to say later.
There's a good boy.

ALTRAV - Clarification needed who is "NMN"?

Listening to al the comment over the last two weeks I can see where
all the commentators have it wrong. It seems to apply on these pages.
The religon of Islam is not divided between the extremists and moderates.
You hear the statement the extremists are not muslims they have stolen
our religion, etc etc.
The real situation is there is a continuum from extremist to moderate.
It is all the same religion, it is just the extremists take the koran
very seriously and comply with its requirements exactly.
The moderates just do not apply all requirements.
This why the moderates are reluctant to speak up and inform police etc.

Altrav,
vast numbers of people were "converted" to Islam by the method
devised by Muhammad himself.
You defeat the other tribe with your gang of mercenaries and then
offer the tribe an offer they cannot refuse.
1. Submit to Islam and be a muslim or
2. Pay the Jizyah tax. (tax owed by all unbelievers to muslims) or
3. Be put to death.

Those that took option 2 soon found that the tax was so arbitrary and
heavy that many later took option 1.
The tax was in fact a protection racket.
Why kill the golden goose ?
Jizyah has been used as an excuse for welfare cheating in the UK.

In those early days they had a very effective army that even wiped
out the much larger Persian army. Only the Roman Byzantine empire
held them off although they did reduce its area.
They did finally defeat them some 700 years later.
This is a long running war.