Allah

nc19

confusedquark wrote: »

Allah is also extremely happy about acts such as praying, fasting, charity, repentance, acting justly, being patient, etc..

How do you know?

Brown Bomber

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I'm not talking about people, I'm talking about countries. People are different, that's unavoidable. There is some variation in how strictly different Islamic countries follow the quran, but relative to western countries (which can be very different to each other) they are all quite similar in culture and values

So to be clear when you said:

western countries still come out as better than muslim countries in peacefulness

You were referring to the handful of tyrant dictators allied to and wholly dependent on the very same "west" for their survival.

Can you still not see the hole in your bucket? And this is even ignoring the ignorance and absurdity of your claim.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Personally attacking me based on four-year old posts from a different forum? FFS, thats pathetic Brown Bomber, not least because your attacks fail horribly.
1) Those posts are in a different forum, and in that forum I capitalise no religion or religious follower-type. Of course, in this forum forum, I do capitalise both. Funny how you ignored that.
2) Those posts are mostly accurate, drawing Muhammad has resulted in violence in the past (at the time of those posts, an attempted car-bombing in Time Square had been initially linked to Muhammad appearing South Park).

1) So you accept that not capitalising "Muslim" and "Islam" is an intentional act of disrespect against Muslims.
2) I am not personally attacking you. I am exposing your prejudices against Muslims through your own words - Words I might add that you haven't distanced yourself from. Do you still consider Muslims in Ireland to be a 5th column, disloyal to the state they live in?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

BTW, should we inquire how many times you have been banned or infracted on that forum (the most lenient forum on this whole site) for your personal vendetta against westerners and non-muslims?

:pac: I am a "westerner" and "non-Muslim" but we can put me into the same category of the "self-hating Jew" if it expands on your conspiracy theory?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Where did I say that the honour killers weren't mentally ill? They obviously are crazy, they murdered (usually by stoning) their own children or siblings for being with people they disapproved of. Honour killings may be tribal and un-Islamic, but why is it then that its mainly (if not only) Muslim cultures that still seem rife with them? Could it be, like I've said all along, that Islam as a ruleset is actually pretty useless for making peaceful, happy and equal communities?

More to the point where have you ever said that Honor Killers are mentally ill? Honor Killings predate Islam and if you map them out you will see a regional connection that includes Hindus, Sikhs and Jews

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Wait, I thought you said that Muslims were actually happier than westerners, based on your incredibly subjective (and not-at-all made up) observations. But you are also implying that Muslim countries are less happy than western countries because they have (westerner, I assume) "masters"? Which is it?

The contrast which I observed was that Muslims don't consider selfishness as a virtue and this made them "happier".

Mark Hamill

Brown Bomber wrote: »

So to be clear when you said:

You were referring to the handful of tyrant dictators allied to and wholly dependent on the very same "west" for their survival.

Can you still not see the hole in your bucket? And this is even ignoring the ignorance and absurdity of your claim.

This has been covered in the thread already. You can't keep blaming the west for Islam's problems.
If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not not be negatively effected by outside influences.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

1) So you accept that not capitalising "Muslim" and "Islam" is an intentional act of disrespect against Muslims.
2) I am not personally attacking you. I am exposing your prejudices against Muslims through your own words - Words I might add that you haven't distanced yourself from. Do you still consider Muslims in Ireland to be a 5th column, disloyal to the state they live in?

I don't capitalise any religion on that forum, not out of disrespect, but out of non-respect. I simply don't have to, so I don't.
That thread concerns the burka ban, my comments were in relation to fundamentalist Muslims who support the burka and react violently against blasphemy.
There is a reason you are not supposed to drag up years old posts from different forums when debating someone, the context rarely matches.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

:pac: I am a "westerner" and "non-Muslim" but we can put me into the same category of the "self-hating Jew" if it expands on your conspiracy theory?

I don't know what this is supposed to be, it's certainly not a denial.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

More to the point where have you ever said that Honor Killers are mentally ill? Honor Killings predate Islam and if you map them out you will see a regional connection that includes Hindus, Sikhs and Jews

I don't need to say it because it's obvious they are crazy.
I said it was mainly muslim cultures that seem rife with them, not that they only exist in muslim cultures.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

The contrast which I observed was that Muslims don't consider selfishness as a virtue and this made them "happier".

Anti-western bias aside, what has this got to do with my question? :
I thought you said that Muslims were actually happier than westerners, based on your incredibly subjective (and not-at-all made up) observations. But you are also implying that Muslim countries are less happy than western countries because they have (westerner, I assume) "masters"? Which is it?

confusedquark

Mark Hamill wrote: »

You can't keep blaming the west for Islam's problems. If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not not be negatively effected by outside influences.

Two assumptions there-
1) That following Islam's rules makes a country immune to outside influences.
2) That Islamic Muslim-predominant countries reliably follow Islamic rules.

1) Following Islam's rules (even assuming a society as a whole reliably does follow them) does not give a society complete immunity to outside influences. It will help a society function to the best of its ability, and to the moral standards of Islam, but it won't mean that society won't be open to failure - both from within (should a key member(s) of that society, through his given free will, fall victim to greed/corruption - often kindly facilitated by outside influences) and from the outside, e.g. should another country/group attack the Muslim society with much greater military/political power. I use the phrase "to the best of its ability" because a poverty-stricken Islamic society will have much less capabilities (of e.g. having enough food/shelter/education to accommodate everyone or indeed defend itself) compared to a richer Islamic society.

2) Aside from my original point of "You've already acknowledged that no country is purely Islamic, and I've no problems acknowledging that instability can and indeed does result in Muslim-predominant countries not fully following Islamic rules", certainly some studies would suggest most Muslim-predominant countries are a far cry from Islamic (admittedly with study limitations). A seatbelt might save your life, but you can't turn around and say it didn't save somebody's life when they weren't wearing it properly in the first place.

You'll probably circle back to something to the effect of "so what use are the rules if even muslims in the most perfect muslim society abandoned them", to which I'll copy and paste a response from earlier in the thread (in response to which you originally moved onto another point).

You keeping questioning the "use of the rules". Their "use" is not to make every Muslim follow them no matter what - our individual free will to choose to follow or not follow them is still preserved. They are merely a guide, with the main benefits of following them coming in the afterlife, and only some in this life. Following the rules may actually result in one enduring more hardship in this life (e.g. doing without food/water when fasting, having to give money to charity, being restricted in the ways through which one can make money etc.). Once again, it's not so simple to say Muslims, en masse, chose not to adhere, there's a huge spectrum of adherence - some will adhere to nothing, some to some things, some to most things, some to everything. The fact that some Muslims in the perfect Muslim society didn't adhere to some rules only confirms that we all have our free will to choose which paths we want to follow - the immediate benefits/rewards of this life, or making sacrifices in this life for the benefit of the next.

kikidelvin

Will politicians go to heaven?

Mark Hamill

Two assumptions there-
1) That following Islam's rules makes a country immune to outside influences.
2) That Islamic Muslim-predominant countries reliably follow Islamic rules.

1) Strawman. I never said that Islam's rules would make a country immune to outside influences. However, you would assume that a ruleset originating with the divine creator of the universe would recognise that outside influences exist and be able to resist them.
2) You can either claim that Allah's rules are observable and testable in populations of Muslims, therefore having to explain why said populations of Muslims always fall at the bottom of the scale for peacefulness, happiness and equality. Or, you can claim that no population of Muslim reliably follow any of Allah's rules, therefore Allah's rules are not observable and testable. You cannot have it both ways.

confusedquark wrote: »

You'll probably circle back to something to the effect of "so what use are the rules if even muslims in the most perfect muslim society abandoned them", to which I'll copy and paste a response from earlier in the thread (in response to which you originally moved onto another point).

Some selective editting there. You left the bit where you said:

confusedquark wrote:

The adherence (or lack thereof) of Muslims to the rules, therefore, does not affect my claim of observing the effects individual rules have in trying to understand Islam as a whole.

and I responded

Mark Hamill wrote:

What? Of course if effects that claim, it completely undermines it. You simply cannot make a reliable observation on the effect of an individual rule if you do not have access to populations that reliably follow or fail to follow that specific rule.

So I didn't move onto another point, I tried to bring the discussion back to the original one.

But to answer the text you repeated here:
It's all well and good saying that people have free to follow the rules, but that is the same everywhere. Yet it is in non-Muslim countries that this free-will, in conjunction with the rulesets (i.e. laws), that has made societies that are the most peaceful, equal and happy.

confusedquark

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1) Strawman. I never said that Islam's rules would make a country immune to outside influences. However, you would assume that a ruleset originating with the divine creator of the universe would recognise that outside influences exist and be able to resist them.

You said "If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not not be negatively effected by outside influences." (assuming your "not not" was a typo)
What's the difference between "not be negatively effected by" and "immune to", if that's not what you said?

Mark Hamill wrote: »

2) You can either claim that Allah's rules are observable and testable in populations of Muslims, therefore having to explain why said populations of Muslims always fall at the bottom of the scale for peacefulness, happiness and equality. Or, you can claim that no population of Muslim reliably follow any of Allah's rules, therefore Allah's rules are not observable and testable. You cannot have it both ways.

Islam's rules are observable and testable in populations of Muslims (even if their main outcome isn't testable until the day of judgement, they are also intended to do good in this life as well, and that we can test for). Three simple reasons why said Muslim-predominant countries today (vs your "always") aren't performing so well (in the context of using them to test the rules):
1) Muslim countries do not reliably follow Islam's rules, and that therefore won't give you reliable results
2) The country populations in question are not otherwise similar and when you have different starting-points (e.g. comparing a country with trouble with corruption, war, revolutions, poverty etc. with a country that isn't affected by such) will also not give you reliable results
3) Non-Muslim countries do not reliably not follow Islam's rules. In fact, that study I mentioned above would suggest that they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves, and that also puts a dent in the reliability of the results.

Regarding your final point. Again, Islam's rules are testable - the issue of trying to use otherwise dissimilar countries who on one side don't reliably follow and on the other side don't reliably not follow the rules, is very much a statistical problem. That statistical problem does not exist when you look at rules individually - because then you can find reliable data from otherwise similar populations who only differ by one side reliably following a rule and the other side reliably not following the rule, and in that context you can have reliable results. Hence my stance. I'd be perfectly happy to accept results of a study comparing otherwise similar populations who differ only by one side reliably following Islam's rules and the other side reliably not following them.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Some selective editting there. You left the bit where you said:

Selective editing because it's possible to make two points in one paragraph, and the text I copied was relevant to your original "So what use are these rules if even muslims in the most perfect muslim society abandoned them?" argument. Your subsequent response only focused on the last line of what I had written, and as you had gone from "what use are the rules" to "you cannot make a reliable observation", that's moving on to another point (albeit back to another point), as you didn't seem to have much else to say about the "the use of the rules" (which you have circled to before, and I figured you'd probably circle back to again, hence I brought it up).

Mark Hamill wrote: »

But to answer the text you repeated here:
It's all well and good saying that people have free to follow the rules, but that is the same everywhere. Yet it is in non-Muslim countries that this free-will, in conjunction with the rulesets (i.e. laws), that has made societies that are the most peaceful, equal and happy.

I'll copy and paste another response:
Western countries come out on top today. Had these comparisons been done around the time of the world wars you mention, then there would have been a very different picture, which equally would not have been a fair reflection of Islamic vs non-Islamic rules. Should there be another western world war in the future, the comparisons would be skewed again. Global politics and economics are very temperamental, and the slightest change at the top can have dramatic effects on the populous, irrespective of what religion/rules people do or don't follow. (I'll also reiterate again that Western countries do not reliably not follow Islam's rules)

To which you responded with variations of "then what use are the rules", which I had already addressed before and copied and pasted again now in the previous post - because you didn't have anything more to say on that specific point before when I addressed it (and had moved back to another point).

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

You said "If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not not be negatively effected by outside influences." (assuming your "not not" was a typo)
What's the difference between "not be negatively effected by" and "immune to", if that's not what you said?

The difference is that while the influences may exist and some may be negative, the country would overall arise above them (individuals in the countries may fall, but the overall states would resist).

confusedquark wrote: »

Islam's rules are observable and testable in populations of Muslims (even if their main outcome isn't testable until the day of judgement, they are also intended to do good in this life as well, and that we can test for). Three simple reasons why said Muslim-predominant countries today (vs your "always") aren't performing so well (in the context of using them to test the rules):
1) Muslim countries do not reliably follow Islam's rules, and that therefore won't give you reliable results
2) The country populations in question are not otherwise similar and when you have different starting-points (e.g. comparing a country with trouble with corruption, war, revolutions, poverty etc. with a country that isn't affected by such) will also not give you reliable results
3) Non-Muslim countries do not reliably not follow Islam's rules. In fact, that study I mentioned above would suggest that they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves, and that also puts a dent in the reliability of the results.

Regarding your final point. Again, Islam's rules are testable - the issue of trying to use otherwise dissimilar countries who on one side don't reliably follow and on the other side don't reliably not follow the rules, is very much a statistical problem. That statistical problem does not exist when you look at rules individually - because then you can find reliable data from otherwise similar populations who only differ by one side reliably following a rule and the other side reliably not following the rule, and in that context you can have reliable results. Hence my stance. I'd be perfectly happy to accept results of a study comparing otherwise similar populations who differ only by one side reliably following Islam's rules and the other side reliably not following them.

1) The bits in bold directly contradict each other. You cannot reliably test something if you cannot get reliable test results.
2) Those countries weren't always in situations of war, poverty etc so at one point in time they should have been quite similar. That they aren't is a mark against the effectiveness of their rules and societies to resist outside influence
3) Non Muslim countries follow their own rulesets, many far older than Islam itself. And even with the disparity you can get between non-Muslim countries, they still (as a group) out perform Muslim countries (as a group).
4) (the last paragraph) The problem is, and I've said it before, is that Islam's rules are a package deal. You cannot pick and choose individual rules out of an active set, say these obviously work, therefore the set works. Any societal ruleset in existence would pass that rules. To do what you are doing is essentially data-dredging and that is a statistical fallacy.

confusedquark wrote: »

I'll copy and paste another response:
Western countries come out on top today. Had these comparisons been done around the time of the world wars you mention, then there would have been a very different picture, which equally would not have been a fair reflection of Islamic vs non-Islamic rules. Should there be another western world war in the future, the comparisons would be skewed again. Global politics and economics are very temperamental, and the slightest change at the top can have dramatic effects on the populous, irrespective of what religion/rules people do or don't follow. (I'll also reiterate again that Western countries do not reliably not follow Islam's rules)

To which you responded with variations of "then what use are the rules", which I had already addressed before and copied and pasted again now in the previous post - because you didn't have anything more to say on that specific point before when I addressed it (and had moved back to another point).

Actually, I would have said that Muslim countries would have come out on top (or at least equal) for a long time before, and up to, the start of the last century. Before World War 2 there were many wars in west (many violent rebellions against the British, for instance), women had next-to-no rights and life was generally crap with disease and death rife in society.
That a lot of these changed relatively fast (well, 100 years or so) does show how volatile global politics and economics can be, but you need to remember that global politics and economics are informed by society and it's rules and society and it's rules are inform by global politics and economics. These changed because society improved, and that improved politics and economics.
Islam did not improve in that time. In fact, you could say that Islam has never changed, as it's rules are set out in the quran and have remained unchanged since the first quran was written. Now you may say that Islam changed because of the west and this may be true. But then we come back to the same question: the west also effected the west. And in effecting itself (not least, 2 world wars with itself) it has made massive leaps in peacefulness, equality and happiness, from society effecting politics and economics, and vice-versa. Why didn't Islam follow suit? What is it about the Islamic ruleset that held it back or that didn't allow it to take advantage of whatever it was the west took advantage of to improve itself?

confusedquark

Mark Hamill wrote: »

The difference is that while the influences may exist and some may be negative, the country would overall arise above them (individuals in the countries may fall, but the overall states would resist).

That does very little to explain the distinction between how a country could "not be negatively affected by" and "would overall arise above" but at the same time, not be "immune to" those influences. Frankly, it doesn't really matter to me - I could have just as easily used "not be negatively affected by" in my initial point as I'd consider it synonymous to "immune to", but if you're going to go all "strawman", I'm curious as to how they mean different things to you.

Irrespective of terminology, a country is little more than the sum of it's individuals - if enough influential individuals fail (even one if that individual is a senior figure), country's can suffer as a result. Society won't always catch these people, because corruption and greed typically happen behind closed doors and often don't become apparent until it's too late.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1) The bits in bold directly contradict each other. You cannot reliably test something if you cannot get reliable test results.
2) Those countries weren't always in situations of war, poverty etc so at one point in time they should have been quite similar. That they aren't is a mark against the effectiveness of their rules and societies to resist outside influence
3) Non Muslim countries follow their own rulesets, many far older than Islam itself. And even with the disparity you can get between non-Muslim countries, they still (as a group) out perform Muslim countries (as a group).
4) (the last paragraph) The problem is, and I've said it before, is that Islam's rules are a package deal. You cannot pick and choose individual rules out of an active set, say these obviously work, therefore the set works. Any societal ruleset in existence would pass that rules. To do what you are doing is essentially data-dredging and that is a statistical fallacy.

1) In the context of what I've been saying all along, individual rules can be tested both within Muslim and non-Muslim populations (as the testing of individual rules, e.g. alcohol, drugs, does not need a person to be a Muslim), and if you have similar populations that only differ by the one thing you are testing, then you will have reliable results. However, Muslim-predominant countries do not reliably follow Islam's rules, and therefore the study you cite will not give reliable results for the 3 reasons I mentioned. Apologies for not spelling out "individual" again - it was very much implied. Btw, you bringing up a "contradiction" doesn't actually address the point of your study being unreliable.
2) Being similar "at one point in time" (even if that was the case) would only be relevant if from that point going forward the only difference between the countries was the reliable following or not following of rules. Poverty, war, corruption, drought etc. can very much occur independent of what rules a people follow, and certainly with retrospective studies as this one - cause, effect and confounders aren't easy to prove.
3) If there is a significant overlap between the rulesets of non-Muslim countries and Muslim-predominant countries, irrespective of who had the rules first - when what you're testing is the efficacy of Islam's rules, you need to compare them (assuming you had a country that reliably followed them in the first place) to countries that reliably don't follow (ideally) any of Islam's rules. Non-Muslim countries performing better as a group doesn't tell you that it's because of them not following Islam's rules, when, as I mentioned above, they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves.
4) An actual Strawman. I am not picking and choosing individual rules to "prove" Islam's rule work. I've simply said that to understand Islam, one should look at whatever reliable evidence is out there. Statistically, reliable data on individual rules is much easier to come by, whereas available data on Islam's rules as a whole is simply not reliable enough - for the 3 reasons mentioned above. That's a statistical reality.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Actually, I would have said that Muslim countries would have come out on top (or at least equal) for a long time before, and up to, the start of the last century. Before World War 2 there were many wars in west (many violent rebellions against the British, for instance), women had next-to-no rights and life was generally crap with disease and death rife in society.
That a lot of these changed relatively fast (well, 100 years or so) does show how volatile global politics and economics can be, but you need to remember that global politics and economics are informed by society and it's rules and society and it's rules are inform by global politics and economics. These changed because society improved, and that improved politics and economics.
Islam did not improve in that time. In fact, you could say that Islam has never changed, as it's rules are set out in the quran and have remained unchanged since the first quran was written. Now you may say that Islam changed because of the west and this may be true. But then we come back to the same question: the west also effected the west. And in effecting itself (not least, 2 world wars with itself) it has made massive leaps in peacefulness, equality and happiness, from society effecting politics and economics, and vice-versa. Why didn't Islam follow suit? What is it about the Islamic ruleset that held it back or that didn't allow it to take advantage of whatever it was the west took advantage of to improve itself?

The west didn't affect Islam - the west effected Muslim-predominant countries. Modern-day middle east was created after the fall of the Ottoman empire only in the past century, and the west had a huge influence on the formation of these new countries and subsequently supporting their leaders/dictators/royal families - and I suppose it's debatable how much those leaders do for the west in return for their support (I've limited knowledge on the latter as I haven't read a huge amount on the topic, so can only guess). So I don't think it's a case that Islam needs to improve itself - I of course believe that it's teachings are universal and don't need to be "improved" - only adhered to, which hasn't been the case in the past century. The west, on the other hand, I'd argue has adhered to many Islamic principles that will result in societies performing well (even if these principles had existed prior to Islam) - such as minimising corruption, discrimination, providing social welfare systems, providing education etc. (as well as the other factors looked at in that article that puts them ahead in following Islamic principles). So once again, it's not so straight forward to say Islam is the issue if Muslim-predominant countries aren't performing well.

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

That does very little to explain the distinction between...

Think of it like a human body, the ruleset is the immune system. A good immune system is rarely actually immune to any given outside infection, it just reacts quickly and efficiently before negative symptoms effect the overall body.

confusedquark wrote: »

1) In the context of what I've been saying all along, individual rules can be tested both within Muslim and non-Muslim populations (as the testing of individual rules, e.g. alcohol, drugs, does not need a person to be a Muslim), and if you have similar populations that only differ by the one thing you are testing, then you will have reliable results. However, Muslim-predominant countries do not reliably follow Islam's rules, and therefore the study you cite will not give reliable results for the 3 reasons I mentioned. Apologies for not spelling out "individual" again - it was very much implied. Btw, you bringing up a "contradiction" doesn't actually address the point of your study being unreliable.
2) Being similar "at one point in time" (even if that was the case) would only be relevant if from that point going forward the only difference between the countries was the reliable following or not following of rules. Poverty, war, corruption, drought etc. can very much occur independent of what rules a people follow, and certainly with retrospective studies as this one - cause, effect and confounders aren't easy to prove.
3) If there is a significant overlap between the rulesets of non-Muslim countries and Muslim-predominant countries, irrespective of who had the rules first - when what you're testing is the efficacy of Islam's rules, you need to compare them (assuming you had a country that reliably followed them in the first place) to countries that reliably don't follow (ideally) any of Islam's rules. Non-Muslim countries performing better as a group doesn't tell you that it's because of them not following Islam's rules, when, as I mentioned above, they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves.
4) An actual Strawman. I am not picking and choosing individual rules to "prove" Islam's rule work. I've simply said that to understand Islam, one should look at whatever reliable evidence is out there. Statistically, reliable data on individual rules is much easier to come by, whereas available data on Islam's rules as a whole is simply not reliable enough - for the 3 reasons mentioned above. That's a statistical reality.

1) This is contradicted by my number 4 from the previous post, so I wont repeat myself.
2) So? All societies exist with the possibilities of war, poverty etc. and all societies have prescribed notions on how to react to them. It seems that Islamic societies, despite starting from very similar starting points, have almost all only ended up with one thing in common - they react very badly to these possibilities.
3) Almost all societies share some rules, societies are pretty much guaranteed to collapse if they have no rules prohibiting stealing and murder and the like. This is why I have pointed out so many times that Islam's rules are a package deal. You have to look at them all as a group, not just the generic ones.
4) You are picking and choosing. Statistically, the outcome we are testing is which societies do better, so the social categories of peacefulness, equality and happiness are the perfect measures of that.
Picking individual outcomes like alcohol related-disease doesn't tell us any about Islam's rules, it doesn't even tell us much about Islam's rule on not drinking alcohol. All we know from looking at alcohol related disease is that don't drink alcohol = don't get alcohol related diseases. It doesn't tell us anything about the outcomes of the social conditioning that Islam uses to achieve that, anything about other health effects because there are no studies which split testing groups according to religion and looks at overall health. Just because you can't drink doesn't mean you wont take up other unhealthy vices - I've yet to see a study indicating that Muslims have the longest life expectancy (corrected for social conditions)

confusedquark wrote: »

So once again, it's not so straight forward to say Islam is the issue if Muslim-predominant countries aren't performing well.

If Islam's teachings are universal, then why don't Muslim countries adhere to them simply by force of numbers? Surely Muslims must at least know these universal rules (Muslims are supposed to do a lot of in-depth study of the Quran, many Muslim countries prescribe such study in schools)? Wouldn't nearly all just follow the same rules if they were obviously universal? Wouldn't every Muslim country follow the same rules if they were universal? OK, maybe some Muslim countries are effected by the west somehow, but how could the west stop individuals from reading the Quran? How could it stop the universal rules being seen and followed that way (especially as you are now claiming that the west follows a lot of these rules anyway)?

confusedquark

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Think of it like a human body, the ruleset is the immune system. A good immune system is rarely actually immune to any given outside infection, it just reacts quickly and efficiently before negative symptoms effect the overall body.

A good immune system is "actually" immune to many many infections and you won't develop any symptoms at all because your antibodies (that give you immunity) will have eradicated the infection on first contact. There are many infections your body isn't "actually" immune to, and you will develop symptoms of infection (fever etc.) as your immune system fights off the infection over a number of days. But the latter is irrelevant because my point was the specific use of what "immune to" actually means (which in the case of your analogy, would be the former), and the non-medical definition of which is "protected or exempt, especially from an obligation or the effects of something", which is synonymous to your original phrase "would not be negatively effected by".

The fact that you even objected to my initial use of the word as somehow misrepresenting your argument is just another example of pointless nit-picking.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1) This is contradicted by my number 4 from the previous post, so I wont repeat myself.
2) So? All societies exist with the possibilities of war, poverty etc. and all societies have prescribed notions on how to react to them. It seems that Islamic societies, despite starting from very similar starting points, have almost all only ended up with one thing in common - they react very badly to these possibilities.
3) Almost all societies share some rules, societies are pretty much guaranteed to collapse if they have no rules prohibiting stealing and murder and the like. This is why I have pointed out so many times that Islam's rules are a package deal. You have to look at them all as a group, not just the generic ones.
4) You are picking and choosing. Statistically, the outcome we are testing is which societies do better, so the social categories of peacefulness, equality and happiness are the perfect measures of that.
Picking individual outcomes like alcohol related-disease doesn't tell us any about Islam's rules, it doesn't even tell us much about Islam's rule on not drinking alcohol. All we know from looking at alcohol related disease is that don't drink alcohol = don't get alcohol related diseases. It doesn't tell us anything about the outcomes of the social conditioning that Islam uses to achieve that, anything about other health effects because there are no studies which split testing groups according to religion and looks at overall health. Just because you can't drink doesn't mean you wont take up other unhealthy vices - I've yet to see a study indicating that Muslims have the longest life expectancy (corrected for social conditions)

1) Your number 4 did nothing to address the point I originally made, which (again) is that by using populations (Muslim-predominant countries) that do not reliably follow an entire ruleset (Islam) that you want to test, you will not have reliable results.
2) Confounders do not effect all countries equally - if they did, they wouldn't be confounders. The question is whether Muslim-predominant countries are in a bad position today because of these confounders, or because of trying to follow Islam's rule, or because they are not following Islam's rules as well as non-Muslim countries. The jury is out on that - a retrospective study comparing countries with unreliable data (in the context of compliance or lack thereof with Islam's rules) will not give you the answer.
3) That, once again, does nothing to address my point "Non-Muslim countries performing better as a group doesn't tell you that it's because of them not following Islam's rules, when, as I mentioned above, they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves."
3-4) The social categories of peacefulness, equality and happiness are indeed the perfect measures to see how well societies are performing, and if you had reliable data of 1) Muslim-predominant countries reliably following Islam's rules, 2) Muslim-predominant countries being equally affected (or unaffected) by confounders as non-Muslim countries and 3) Non-Muslim countries reliably not following Islam's rules, (or a reliable means to correct for the above 3 points) then your results to test the outcome of Islam's rules on a population would indeed be valid. But the statistical reality is that we do not have the sufficient and reliable data, and therefore cannot reliably test Islam's rules as a collective with it. From a statistical standpoint, the reliable data just isn't there, no matter how much you or I would like to test all of Islam's rules as a collective. Given that lack of reliable data to test the collective, the next best thing we can do is examine as many of Islam's rules individually as we can, using all the reliable data we do have (and given the nature of statistics, reliable data concerning individual rules is out there) and reach a personal decision about the effect of Islam's rules based on that, and regarding the individual rules that we cannot test for or that we do not have reliable data on, that's going to be a matter of individual opinion - which is what matters of religion and belief ultimately boil down to.

I've repeated the above ad nauseum at this stage, and again, you're obviously not interested in taking it on board, but the statistical reality remains.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

If Islam's teachings are universal, then why don't Muslim countries adhere to them simply by force of numbers? Surely Muslims must at least know these universal rules (Muslims are supposed to do a lot of in-depth study of the Quran, many Muslim countries prescribe such study in schools)? Wouldn't nearly all just follow the same rules if they were obviously universal? Wouldn't every Muslim country follow the same rules if they were universal? OK, maybe some Muslim countries are effected by the west somehow, but how could the west stop individuals from reading the Quran? How could it stop the universal rules being seen and followed that way (especially as you are now claiming that the west follows a lot of these rules anyway)?

1) A universal rule for all of us is that we should do regular exercise to keep healthy. Just because we know what we need to do, it doesn't mean that we will automatically do it. People, despite having knowledge of what they should be doing, still have their free will to decide whether they actually want to do it or not, and when something involves effort/restraint etc, people will often choose not to do it and focus instead on the short-term gratification.
2) In the same way that 99.99% of the Irish population being non-corrupt would not have stopped the banking crisis, if enough influential individuals in a society fail (even one if that individual is a senior figure), entire countries can suffer as a result. Society won't always catch these people, because corruption and greed typically happen behind closed doors and often don't become apparent until it's too late.
3) Entire regimes aren't easy to overthrow, as we have witnessed in the middle east over the past number of years, so even when corruption/greed is known, the people in power are often very good at keeping themselves in power.

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

The fact that you even objected to my initial use of the word as somehow misrepresenting your argument is just another example of pointless nit-picking.

I objected to your use of the word because I assumed you weren't argue for me. You said before that is was an assumption that "following Islam's rules makes a country immune to outside influences", implying Islam's rules don't do that at all. I assumed that you were taking some super strict definition on immune, implying the assumption was that Islam's rules make a society impervious to outside effects. With your given definition it implies that you don't see Islamic rules as offering even a protection against outside influence, which just begs the question I've been asking the whole time: then what use are they?

confusedquark wrote: »

1) Your number 4 did nothing to address the point I originally made, which (again) is that by using populations (Muslim-predominant countries) that do not reliably follow an entire ruleset (Islam) that you want to test, you will not have reliable results.
2) Confounders do not effect all countries equally - if they did, they wouldn't be confounders. The question is whether Muslim-predominant countries are in a bad position today because of these confounders, or because of trying to follow Islam's rule, or because they are not following Islam's rules as well as non-Muslim countries. The jury is out on that - a retrospective study comparing countries with unreliable data (in the context of compliance or lack thereof with Islam's rules) will not give you the answer.
3) That, once again, does nothing to address my point "Non-Muslim countries performing better as a group doesn't tell you that it's because of them not following Islam's rules, when, as I mentioned above, they actually do a lot better a job of following many of Islam's rules than Muslim-predominant countries themselves."
3-4) The social categories of peacefulness, equality and happiness are indeed the perfect measures to see how well societies are performing, and if you had reliable data of 1) Muslim-predominant countries reliably following Islam's rules, 2) Muslim-predominant countries being equally affected (or unaffected) by confounders as non-Muslim countries and 3) Non-Muslim countries reliably not following Islam's rules, (or a reliable means to correct for the above 3 points) then your results to test the outcome of Islam's rules on a population would indeed be valid. But the statistical reality is that we do not have the sufficient and reliable data, and therefore cannot reliably test Islam's rules as a collective with it. From a statistical standpoint, the reliable data just isn't there, no matter how much you or I would like to test all of Islam's rules as a collective. Given that lack of reliable data to test the collective, the next best thing we can do is examine as many of Islam's rules individually as we can, using all the reliable data we do have (and given the nature of statistics, reliable data concerning individual rules is out there) and reach a personal decision about the effect of Islam's rules based on that, and regarding the individual rules that we cannot test for or that we do not have reliable data on, that's going to be a matter of individual opinion - which is what matters of religion and belief ultimately boil down to.

I've repeated the above ad nauseum at this stage, and again, you're obviously not interested in taking it on board, but the statistical reality remains.

1). How is it that this applies to me but not to you?
2). What if those confounders arose because of Islamic rules? How does that possibility factor into your argument, or does it factor at all?
3). It does. They aren't following Islams rules, they are follow common human rules, that far pre-date Islam (probably even any religion). Even if you want to claim that non-Muslim countries are actually following Islamic rules when they outlaw stealing/murder etc., that doesn't account for the rules they follow that Muslim countries don't (and vice-versa). When you factor in all the rules for each type of country, we see the ones that follow the Islam specific rules do not do as well in peacefulness, happiness and equality as non-Muslim countries.
4). You would only need those three statistical groups for a quantitative study (to say how much of a effect following Islamic rules has on a country's scoring under the categories of peacefulness etc.). A qualitative study can just look at all countries. As the qualitative studies show Muslims countries scoring lower than non-Muslim countries (with the lowest scores for countries with the most strict interpretation of Muslim rules), it shows that there is an effect and that it negatively correlates with increased strictness of observance of Islamic rules.

confusedquark wrote: »

1) A universal rule for all of us is that we should do regular exercise to keep healthy. Just because we know what we need to do, it doesn't mean that we will automatically do it. People, despite having knowledge of what they should be doing, still have their free will to decide whether they actually want to do it or not, and when something involves effort/restraint etc, people will often choose not to do it and focus instead on the short-term gratification.
2) In the same way that 99.99% of the Irish population being non-corrupt would not have stopped the banking crisis, if enough influential individuals in a society fail (even one if that individual is a senior figure), entire countries can suffer as a result. Society won't always catch these people, because corruption and greed typically happen behind closed doors and often don't become apparent until it's too late.
3) Entire regimes aren't easy to overthrow, as we have witnessed in the middle east over the past number of years, so even when corruption/greed is known, the people in power are often very good at keeping themselves in power.

1). Yes, people know they should exercise and the issue is simply not doing exercise. But that's not what's happening with Islam's so-called universal rules though, is it? It's not that everyone knows the rules, but some choose not to follow them. Its that different countries have almost fundamentally different interpretations of those rules, to the point that something that wouldn't even be commented upon in some countries, could get you lashed or worse in others.
2/3). While the likes of a banking collapse might only take a very tiny minority, militant control takes a good bit more. The rulers of oppressive regimes had to build up power, convincing significant numbers of followers to be willing to be violent to support them, and that's despite all of them having been raised to follow universal teachings that you would assume would teach against that kind of thing.

confusedquark

Mark Hamill wrote: »

I objected to your use of the word because I assumed you weren't argue for me. You said before that is was an assumption that "following Islam's rules makes a country immune to outside influences", implying Islam's rules don't do that at all. I assumed that you were taking some super strict definition on immune, implying the assumption was that Islam's rules make a society impervious to outside effects. With your given definition it implies that you don't see Islamic rules as offering even a protection against outside influence, which just begs the question I've been asking the whole time: then what use are they?

"Would not be negatively affected by", "immune to", and "impervious to" all mean the same thing. Your initial objection was pointless nit-picking. Moving on, I didn't in the slightest imply Islam's rules don't offer any protection - but I'm not surprised to see you reach that conclusion. My argument is that Islam's rules don't offer 100% protection, but "not 100%" does not mean 0%. A society that reliably follows Islam's rules would be less likely to be affected by outside influences - but it won't be immune to, or impervious to, or indeed it won't "not be negatively affected by" outside influences, and (all nit-picking aside) hence my objection to your original comment - "If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not be negatively effected by outside influences."

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1). How is it that this applies to me but not to you?
2). What if those confounders arose because of Islamic rules? How does that possibility factor into your argument, or does it factor at all?
3). It does. They aren't following Islams rules, they are follow common human rules, that far pre-date Islam (probably even any religion). Even if you want to claim that non-Muslim countries are actually following Islamic rules when they outlaw stealing/murder etc., that doesn't account for the rules they follow that Muslim countries don't (and vice-versa). When you factor in all the rules for each type of country, we see the ones that follow the Islam specific rules do not do as well in peacefulness, happiness and equality as non-Muslim countries.
4). You would only need those three statistical groups for a quantitative study (to say how much of a effect following Islamic rules has on a country's scoring under the categories of peacefulness etc.). A qualitative study can just look at all countries. As the qualitative studies show Muslims countries scoring lower than non-Muslim countries (with the lowest scores for countries with the most strict interpretation of Muslim rules), it shows that there is an effect and that it negatively correlates with increased strictness of observance of Islamic rules.

1) Because I'm not the one using populations (Muslim-predominant countries) that do not reliably follow an entire ruleset (Islam) that I want to test, and then claiming that the comparisons give a reliable reflection on the effect of that ruleset.
2) I'll repeat "The question is whether Muslim-predominant countries are in a bad position today because of these confounders, or because of trying to follow Islam's rule, or because they are not following Islam's rules as well as non-Muslim countries. The jury is out on that - a retrospective study comparing countries with unreliable data (in the context of compliance or lack thereof with Islam's rules) will not give you the answer." Of course it's a possibility (as I had said), but the issue we're discussing here is the fact that the retrospective study you cited to make that claim is inadequate and unreliable for that specific purpose, with confounding variables that you can't correct for being one part of the reason.
3) Common human rules? Whether you like it or not, religion has had a huge impact on our present day moral values. Just because we consider murder, stealing etc. wrong today it doesn't mean that civilisations gone by didn't believe in other philosophies. Moving on to your main point, the fact of the matter is that you haven't even made an attempt to factor in all the rules of each type of country - from the offset you have just gone with the assumption that Muslim-predominant = Islamic, and non-Muslim-predominant = not Islamic, despite evidence to the contrary.
4) That's nonsensical. In a qualitative study, the findings are not conclusive and cannot be used to make generalizations about the population of interest. A quantitative study with reliable data is needed for that, and the latter is exactly what you do not have to make any such conclusions - as much as you're itching to jump to them.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1). Yes, people know they should exercise and the issue is simply not doing exercise. But that's not what's happening with Islam's so-called universal rules though, is it? It's not that everyone knows the rules, but some choose not to follow them. Its that different countries have almost fundamentally different interpretations of those rules, to the point that something that wouldn't even be commented upon in some countries, could get you lashed or worse in others.
2/3). While the likes of a banking collapse might only take a very tiny minority, militant control takes a good bit more. The rulers of oppressive regimes had to build up power, convincing significant numbers of followers to be willing to be violent to support them, and that's despite all of them having been raised to follow universal teachings that you would assume would teach against that kind of thing.

1) Firstly, that actually is what's happening with Islam's rules. Most people do know what they should be doing, and they will choose whether they want to do them or not. It's very easy to pick out a few controversial issues that countries (who again, might be Muslim-predominant, but are often far from Islamic) differ on and then suggest there's no general consensus on the rules as a whole, but the majority of Islam's rules are straight forward to follow.
2) Even if people are taught against certain things, sometimes many of them will choose short-term gratification together. We all have our free will to choose to follow or not.

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

A society that reliably follows Islam's rules would be less likely to be affected by outside influences

Less likely than what? Non-Muslim societies? Non-Muslim societies do better than Muslim societies under the three criteria, despite being the source of these supposedly negative outside influences (and influencing each other to a far greater degree).

confusedquark wrote: »

1) Because I'm not the one using populations (Muslim-predominant countries) that do not reliably follow an entire ruleset (Islam) that I want to test, and then claiming that the comparisons give a reliable reflection on the effect of that ruleset.
2) I'll repeat "The question is whether Muslim-predominant countries are in a bad position today because of these confounders, or because of trying to follow Islam's rule, or because they are not following Islam's rules as well as non-Muslim countries. The jury is out on that - a retrospective study comparing countries with unreliable data (in the context of compliance or lack thereof with Islam's rules) will not give you the answer." Of course it's a possibility (as I had said), but the issue we're discussing here is the fact that the retrospective study you cited to make that claim is inadequate and unreliable for that specific purpose, with confounding variables that you can't correct for being one part of the reason.
3) Common human rules? Whether you like it or not, religion has had a huge impact on our present day moral values. Just because we consider murder, stealing etc. wrong today it doesn't mean that civilisations gone by didn't believe in other philosophies. Moving on to your main point, the fact of the matter is that you haven't even made an attempt to factor in all the rules of each type of country - from the offset you have just gone with the assumption that Muslim-predominant = Islamic, and non-Muslim-predominant = not Islamic, despite evidence to the contrary.
4) That's nonsensical. In a qualitative study, the findings are not conclusive and cannot be used to make generalizations about the population of interest. A quantitative study with reliable data is needed for that, and the latter is exactly what you do not have to make any such conclusions - as much as you're itching to jump to them.

1) But you then try to take the same populations and claim they are evidence for the effectiveness of individual rules (rules like no alcohol whose effectiveness or non-effectiveness have nothing to do with religion at all).
2) I didn't cite any retrospective studies. I cited 3 global surveys, with results given for each country. It is perfectly valid (given that the surveys where competently performed) to compare countries to each other.
3) Whether you like or not, common human rules like don't steal and don't murder far precede modern human religions. The Golden Rule dates to at least 2000 BC.
I don't need to pick each country apart looking at the individual differences in the rules because we can already see what effect those differences have: the more strict a Muslim country is in interpreting Islams Rules, the lower it falls on the lists of peacefulness etc. Muslim countries with the least strict implementations of those rules, and Muslim majority countries which don't implement them as political rule appear higher on those lists.
4) If you had a quantitative study then why would you need to make a generalisation about what you are studying? A quantitative study gives you rates, a qualitative study gives you trends. My studies give trends and it's perfectly acceptable from a statistical point of view to examine these trends and correlate them with other properties of the countries examined (in fact that is the point of the studies, so that policy makers can get an idea of the properties of a country that make it trend higher in the criteria examined).

confusedquark wrote: »

1) Firstly, that actually is what's happening with Islam's rules. Most people do know what they should be doing, and they will choose whether they want to do them or not. It's very easy to pick out a few controversial issues that countries (who again, might be Muslim-predominant, but are often far from Islamic) differ on and then suggest there's no general consensus on the rules as a whole, but the majority of Islam's rules are straight forward to follow.
2) Even if people are taught against certain things, sometimes many of them will choose short-term gratification together. We all have our free will to choose to follow or not.

1) You can't claim there is consensus on the rules as a whole while admitting that not all of the rules are commonly agreed upon. It might only a minority of rules that are disagreed upon, but the nature of the disagreement is huge, up to and including modern wars being fought over them.
2) Which just implies that none of them understand their rules or even really believe their religion, which still undermines your notion that the rules are universally understood.

confusedquark

I'm gonna wrap this up now because this thread isn't going anywhere and you're going to continue nit-picking and repeating points I've addressed ad nauseum. My main reason for re-entering the discussion was to counter your statement "If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not be negatively effected by outside influences", and that I will have adequately done by end of the this post.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Less likely than what? Non-Muslim societies? Non-Muslim societies do better than Muslim societies under the three criteria, despite being the source of these supposedly negative outside influences (and influencing each other to a far greater degree).

Less likely than not following Islam's rules reliably. I don't know how many times I have to repeat it, but your claim once again relies on the wrong assumption that Muslim-predominant countries today reliably follow Islamic rules, and will yet again point you in the direction of that study which showed non-Muslim countries do a much better job of following many of Islam's rules than modern day Muslim-predominant countries themselves.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1) But you then try to take the same populations and claim they are evidence for the effectiveness of individual rules (rules like no alcohol whose effectiveness or non-effectiveness have nothing to do with religion at all).
2) I didn't cite any retrospective studies. I cited 3 global surveys, with results given for each country. It is perfectly valid (given that the surveys where competently performed) to compare countries to each other.
3) Whether you like or not, common human rules like don't steal and don't murder far precede modern human religions. The Golden Rule dates to at least 2000 BC.
I don't need to pick each country apart looking at the individual differences in the rules because we can already see what effect those differences have: the more strict a Muslim country is in interpreting Islams Rules, the lower it falls on the lists of peacefulness etc. Muslim countries with the least strict implementations of those rules, and Muslim majority countries which don't implement them as political rule appear higher on those lists.
4) If you had a quantitative study then why would you need to make a generalisation about what you are studying? A quantitative study gives you rates, a qualitative study gives you trends. My studies give trends and it's perfectly acceptable from a statistical point of view to examine these trends and correlate them with other properties of the countries examined (in fact that is the point of the studies, so that policy makers can get an idea of the properties of a country that make it trend higher in the criteria examined).

1) The difference between you and me is that I'm using (and suggesting others also use) statistically reliable data to compare as many individual rules as is possible (which incidentally does not need the same populations as you are using), whereas you're using statistically flawed methods to make your claims. You've still yet to explain how your claim can hold any validity despite Muslim-predominant countries not reliably following Islam's rules - the most basic requirement of any statistical analysis is to have a group that reliably follows a rule you are looking to test. Your focus instead is on deflecting the issue onto my methods, and resorting to "well, if I'm wrong then so are you" doesn't show that you have a whole lot of belief in your own position.
2) Yes, it is reliable to compare countries (within the limitations of confounders), but it becomes unreliable when you take that data and use it for your own means (to compare the effect of a ruleset), where you wrongly assume that specific countries reliably follow a set of rules, and wrongly assume that other countries reliably do not follow the same set of rules, when your main aim is to compare the effect of said rules.
3) That's it right there. You don't need to compare individual differences in the rules countries follow, you don't need countries that reliably follow a ruleset, you don't need countries that reliably do not a follow a ruleset, you don't need countries that have otherwise similar populations - you don't need very much at all to jump to your conclusions.
4) As I said, in a qualitative study, the findings are not conclusive and cannot be used to make generalisations about the population of interest - and generalisations are exactly what you have been making all along.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

1) You can't claim there is consensus on the rules as a whole while admitting that not all of the rules are commonly agreed upon. It might only a minority of rules that are disagreed upon, but the nature of the disagreement is huge, up to and including modern wars being fought over them.
2) Which just implies that none of them understand their rules or even really believe their religion, which still undermines your notion that the rules are universally understood.

1) I can claim that there is a consensus on the majority of the rules - I used "as a whole" to mean there is a consensus on the majority of rules, but I'm not surprised to see you find another phrase to nit-pick at.

2) Firstly, you're twisting my words. When I said Islam's rules are universal - it meant they will always be applicable to humanity as they are. Anybody bothered enough to learn and teach Islam's rules will understand them, not every Muslim is born "universally understanding" them. Going back to my analogy (not that it should be necessary, but you're obviously struggling to grasp the concept), if people choose not do exercise, it doesn't mean that they don't understand that they should do exercise, it's simply because they choose (through their free will) not to do exercise and focus on short-term gratification. Indeed, they might very well not believe in their religion, and not everybody who's born a Muslim becomes a practising Muslim - in the same way that not everybody who's born a Catholic remains a practising Catholic, but that doesn't undermine what the purpose of the rules is, which I've already explained repeatedly and don't need to do so again. Once again, I can't believe I've had to spell that out for you, but it goes back to you repeating points I've addressed ad nauseum.

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

Less likely than not following Islam's rules reliably. I don't know how many times I have to repeat it, but your claim once again relies on the wrong assumption that Muslim-predominant countries today reliably follow Islamic rules, and will yet again point you in the direction of that study which showed non-Muslim countries do a much better job of following many of Islam's rules than modern day Muslim-predominant countries themselves.

The study supports my point. The rules that Muslim and non-Muslim societies share are non-religion specific (no murder, stealing etc.). That non-Muslim societies follow these more efficiently shows that the other rules they don't follow (i.e. rules specific to Islam like prayer 5 times a day, no pork etc.) actually have a negative overall effect on a society.

confusedquark wrote: »

1) The difference between you and me is that I'm using (and suggesting others also use) statistically reliable data to compare as many individual rules as is possible (which incidentally does not need the same populations as you are using), whereas you're using statistically flawed methods to make your claims. You've still yet to explain how your claim can hold any validity despite Muslim-predominant countries not reliably following Islam's rules - the most basic requirement of any statistical analysis is to have a group that reliably follows a rule you are looking to test. Your focus instead is on deflecting the issue onto my methods, and resorting to "well, if I'm wrong then so are you" doesn't show that you have a whole lot of belief in your own position.
2) Yes, it is reliable to compare countries (within the limitations of confounders), but it becomes unreliable when you take that data and use it for your own means (to compare the effect of a ruleset), where you wrongly assume that specific countries reliably follow a set of rules, and wrongly assume that other countries reliably do not follow the same set of rules, when your main aim is to compare the effect of said rules.
3) That's it right there. You don't need to compare individual differences in the rules countries follow, you don't need countries that reliably follow a ruleset, you don't need countries that reliably do not a follow a ruleset, you don't need countries that have otherwise similar populations - you don't need very much at all to jump to your conclusions.
4) As I said, in a qualitative study, the findings are not conclusive and cannot be used to make generalisations about the population of interest - and generalisations are exactly what you have been making all along.

1) And we are back to you claiming to have populations that I don't have. The simple fact is that you are not using Muslim populations to back-up your claims so even though you might be able to show that e.g. not drinking alcohol is good for a society, you can't say that means Islam's implementation of that rule is good for society.
2) I have accounted for countries not reliably following all the rules by pointing out how the countries that most stringently follow the rules (and therefore more likely to follow more of the rules) fall lower on our categories scales.
3) ?
4) All they can be used is to make generalisations, that's the point I was making. Qualitative => trends => general idea of correlations.

confusedquark wrote: »

1) I can claim that there is a consensus on the majority of the rules - I used "as a whole" to mean there is a consensus on the majority of rules, but I'm not surprised to see you find another phrase to nit-pick at.

2) Firstly, you're twisting my words. When I said Islam's rules are universal - it meant they will always be applicable to humanity as they are. Anybody bothered enough to learn and teach Islam's rules will understand them, not every Muslim is born "universally understanding" them. Going back to my analogy (not that it should be necessary, but you're obviously struggling to grasp the concept), if people choose not do exercise, it doesn't mean that they don't understand that they should do exercise, it's simply because they choose (through their free will) not to do exercise and focus on short-term gratification. Indeed, they might very well not believe in their religion, and not everybody who's born a Muslim becomes a practising Muslim - in the same way that not everybody who's born a Catholic remains a practising Catholic, but that doesn't undermine what the purpose of the rules is, which I've already explained repeatedly and don't need to do so again. Once again, I can't believe I've had to spell that out for you, but it goes back to you repeating points I've addressed ad nauseum.

1) It's not nit-picking, your claim is just wrong. As a whole, there is no consensus. Muslim countries may agree on a large proportion of the rules, but many countries have strong disagreements (sometimes violently) about a significant minority. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland share many of their religious beliefs but you can't say they share a consensus as a whole in any meaningful way.
2) Apologies, I didn't mean to twist your words, I mistook you as meaning that they were universally understood, rather than universally applicable.

Mark Hamill

confusedquark wrote: »

I'm gonna wrap this up now because this thread isn't going anywhere and you're going to continue nit-picking and repeating points I've addressed ad nauseum. My main reason for re-entering the discussion was to counter your statement "If Islam's rules worked then Islamic countries would not be negatively effected by outside influences", and that I will have adequately done by end of the this post.

Thank you for this discussion. Not many theists would put as much effort in explaining their position and beliefs as you, it has been an interesting discussion.