Religion
In reply to the discussion: Reza Aslan Made the Worst Case For Religion On The Daily Show [View all]trotsky
(49,533 posts)People dont derive their values from their religion they bring their values to their religion. Which is why religions like Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, (and) Islam, are experienced in such profound, wide diversity. Two individuals can look at the exact same text and come away with radically different interpretations. Those interpretations have nothing to do with the text, which is, after all, just words on a page, and everything to do with the cultural, nationalistic, ethnic, political prejudices and preconceived notions that the individual brings to the text.
In other words, the religion is blameless. Doesn't matter that the text contains passages telling followers to kill, people somehow interpret that all on their own independently of it being right in the sacred text of the religion.
There is also an excellent dissection of his ridiculous assertions in this article written by former Muslims:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/05/reza-aslan-is-wrong-about-islam-and-this-is-why/