Could be, in fact almost certainly to some degree so, but if the fundamentalists see the moderates as all of those things, then they are not wrong either. Moderate religion helps the fundies in three ways, its failings make them more certain of their extreme views, it renders all religion respectable, and it creates the environment in which they can swim and look for support. Both negative and positive assistance.

@Fernapple I have maintained for a long time that moderate religionists are enablers of their more fanatical brethren.

Around the world, fundamentalist sects are the most dangerous, the most violent, the most determined to gain power, and the most willing to twist and cherry pick their own creed to suit that end. In the USA, we find nominal Catholics and Protestants among the ranks of the Christian nationalists, but the vast majority of them are Evangelical Christians. They are our own, home grown, American Taliban.

Exactly.

@Fernapple ... yes, exactly, 2 of my forarite dead horse abuser/ jockeys. blab on in mutual admiration. do you have a secret planet planet you going to retreat to together? what is all this studious ignoring getting you? is this some uccult form of altzheimers.?

Right on

@holdenc98 I guess your spell checker is on vacation at the moment. On 'studious' leave perhaps.

Amen

@David1955 .try to think beyond spelling

@holdenc98 you don't seem like a very thinking person to me, frankly.

@David1955 and you seem connvention bound and pretentious to me. i wouldnt bother, but rome is burning

@holdenc98 I don't even know what you're talking about, and worse nor do you. If you have an actual reasoned point about the relationship between moderate and extreme religions -- the point of the thread -- then do make it, with some grammatical and spelling accuracy, if that's not too much to ask. ( Enable spell check on your browser, and a grammar check, if you have one.) Elsewise, kindly go back to sleep.

@David1955 .im talking about thel likes of you two refusing to to come to grips with the uverwhelming two red herrings of contemporary left democratic electoral politics politics. feminism and black power. instead we get these endless new theoeetical abstruce insights into pointless augnostic minutia. is it your fondness for your assumed status here in this peanut gallary that produces this truthdenying cowardice?. meanwhile back home on earth reality the last hope of reversing biosphere degredation sinks . we will die with your iconic augnostiic sacred cow popularity here in place. it eappears to be at the heart of the likes of you. prove me wong.. fuck spelling accuracy......translate it.............. is you inner self really that small?..............

@holdenc98 still don't what what you're smoking, and anyway I'm an atheist, not an 'augnostiic'. As you were, my incoherent friend.