| Well I wanted to keep it more hypothetical to avoid offense - if we can agree in theory then that's enough for me. If we disagree that religion can be sharply criticized in any case then the data doesn't matter. It's also HN so I'm trying to be a bit more cautious; dang has been gracious enough not to kill the thread outright. Here's Pew Research on the topic[1] I'm going off. According to this, 74% of Egyptian Muslims favour sharia. Of those, 81% support stoning for adultery, and 86% for death for apostasy. Egypt has 80M Muslims, so that's around 50M people in one country alone, that believe in death for leaving the religion. I'm not saying anyone should be punished. Just that some groups, overall, seem to have many members with views opposite what the country wants. Is this not a fair subject to discuss when talking about integrating hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, into another country? I am uncomfortable with a blanket ban on a particular religion, because it's not accurate enough. But to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either. I'm don't agree we should just assume everyone will put such extreme personal views aside. Thank you for excusing my poor phrasing. 1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... |
Generation after generation, many immigrants to the U.S. have come from poor, backward countries and brought beliefs that would horrify you (and me). The Americans who had came before had the same reaction to them you do. But don't worry: In a generation or two, the descendants of those new immigrants will say the same thing about the next group.
> to pretend there's absolutely no signal at all doesn't seem good either
Copied from a response to another post of yours:
many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc.
Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush.
You seem like you understand data; projecting from a survey of Egyptians to the likely behavior of every U.S. immigrant of a certain religion seems like an incredible stretch.