1. Any big political organisation, would probably be able to survive such a scandal and survive.

If it was found that democratic party had systematically molested children and tried to cover it up, do you think people would be voting for them the next election?  Yeah, I'm not buying this.

@bolded: Literally everywhere teaches one to fundamentally just obey what they're told. Schools teach you that you need to obey the higher ups and lick up to them as much as you can to get somewhere.

 As a teacher, I take issue with that.  Schools I've been in have teachers explain the logical reason for rules, and inflict rational consequences for disobeying this.  Of course, some teachers do demand obedience, but that is not inherent in the system.  There is no school for instance (well except religious schools) that teach that teachers are appointed by god and if you disobey them you go to hell.  Blind obedience exists in some schools, but it is not built into the fabric of the institution as it is with religion.

Politics teach you to obey and trust them and hence most politicians ( Especially Presidents/Prime ministers ) are seen as people who know better than you and should be trusted even when that may be unqualified or are like puppet behind strings.

No.  We vote for politicians every few years.  That's quite different from blind obedience.  There are flaws with the system, but the questioning of politicians is actually built into it.  If people were blindly obedient, you wouldn't have politicians spending millions of dollars each campaign system, and you wouldn't have competition for offices.  The approval rating for the Senate is like under 20%.  Obama's is just under 50.  This is not blind obedience.  

The bad thing about this is that previously these where not actually the main functions of such institutions. School was there to make you use your brain and not be spoon-fed and respect towards people in power should be the reason why you obey them and not just because.

No.  Public schooling was actually designed in large part for the expressed purpose of religious instruction.  Protestant organizations were a huge driving force in the public schooling movement in the US.  There has been a movement towards less authoritative styles of education.  Ask a long time teacher if students were more obedient now or in the past.  And, objectively, the use of discipline is WAY restricted compared to the past.  

Politics was set up to fundemantly make you not obey whatever the upper powers choose, you and the rest of the nation could change whatever the higher-ups had chosen. All of them yet, turned to teaching the average folk that obedience is key. Hence we can almost come to a conclusion that practically humanity cannot exist with someone whether it be that person up there ( Who may or may not exist ) or someone whose seen as a role model down here.

Yeah, I don't think that either.  The media regularly tears into politicians.  Turn to fox news to see Obama consistently torn down.  Look at your facebook feed to see how obedient people are.  Look to MSNBC or the Daily Show to see the obedience and respect we have for republicans.  

Then, watch what happens when someone draws a cartoon of muhammed or says something negative about Jesus.  The levels of obedience are nowehere NEAR comparable.

Suffering incredibly due to influence of religion comment: Extrimists exists in everything whether it be politics of religion. Most people in the middle East/Africa are suffering at the hands of a couple of groups of extremists who are thirsty for blood. There are then numerous wars being waged for religion but we are all human and hence pride for one's homeland may sometimes get out of control. They may be fighting in the name of religion but I highly doubt that that's the whole story.

It is not the whole story, and I didn't mean to imply it was.  But religion is the rallying cry.  In the middle east, people have been trained to believe that obedience to Allah is mandatory.  So, groups use that to take advantage of the impressionable.  Religion is a weapon that is being used, and without it, these extremists would lack the power to do what they wished.  

Of course in other cases, religion is the ACTUAL cause of suffering.  Look at what is going on with Christianity in Uganda or how the Catholic Church is encouraging people in Africa not to use condoms.  

@Pedo comment: Ounce again we are all human, you have urges and we all have urges. Stuff like this happens everywhere and you really can't stop. You also can't blame a whole institution for a problem a small portion have made.

Kids are trained to implicitly trust priests.  Adults believe priests are holy and so they trust their kids with them.  The church, in an effort to protect its images, actual moved pedophiles around the world to avoid prosecution.  This isn't just something that happend.  It is something that was enabled by the institution.  They taught kids to trust the holy man, and the holy man could then abuse that trust.  This would not have happened on this scale in ANY OTHER organization.  What other institution has had a pedophilia issue on this scale?  

@Gays/Individual rights: Morality exists and you can't really help it, the church is just morally against gays. Ounce a black man dining in a restaurant was almost forbidden but the church back then supported against all negative tides, equality for these people. Unfortunaly the religious Morality ( or catholic Morality ) only goes this far.

No... the church did not support equality for black people.  Some chuches did others didn't. 

But here's what it comes down to.  You don't need the church to tell you that we shouldn't enslave people or limit their rights.  In fact, the Bible specifically endorses slavery. The idea that "maybe it's not right to enslave people" is something we could have gotten to with or without the church.

On the contrary, the idea that homosexuality is a sin is almost intrinsically linked to religion.  There is no real logic to claim that this activity is really harmful, unless you're a wandering desert tribe that needs a high rate of population growth.  Do you suggest that it is just a coincidence that the vast majority of those against gay marraige are Christian?  That proposition 8 in California was funded mainly by the mormon church?  That the governor of Louisianna is refusing to accept the Supreme Court's ruling because "God defined marraige as being between a man and a woman?"

You don't need to be a Christian to dislike gays (and not all Christians do dislike gays), but this is the only justification that can be given that people will accept without just saying, "you're a biggot".

@Getting killed: And someone can get killed/ hasseled for being Gay/Black/White/politically different/ everything really. It's how it goes and it really can't be stopped. 

It can't be stopped completely.  But one way to reduce it is to eliminate an institution that specifically TELLS US TO KILL GAY PEOPLE "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."  It's in the holy book of the institution. The opposition to homosexuality is almost entirely religious.  Don't throw politics and race into this, because those are seperate issues.  This is a "sin" that is, as of now, intrinsically linked to religion.

First off, if institutions like school or politics DID encourage blind obedience the way Christianity does, I'd want to change those too.  I don't think this is the case, but even if it was that's irrelevant.  If other organizations encourage blind obedience that doesn't mean religion can too.  It means all of them should be reformed or abolished.

A key difference between religion and the others is that others are necessary institutions.  We need schools.  So if they're flawed, we need to reform them.  We can't just get rid of schools and governments, so we have to fix the flaws.  But, we can live without religion, so we can just dump the baby Jesus out with the bath water. 

It seems that your defense of religion amounts to "well other people do it too". And in some cases that's true.  In some cases that's not.  People have been killed for drawing Mohammed.  How can this happen with religion?  People are killed for apostasy.  How can this be without religion?  (See also condoms in Africa,evangelism in Uganda, honor killings in Muslim countries, and so on).  One of my favorite religion only sins is desecration of the host.  In the middle ages, people were LITERALLY killed for breaking crackers that were said to be part of the body of Christ.  Let me repeat that.   http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_blib2.htm

PEOPLE WERE KILLED FOR BREAKING CRAKCERS.  Yeah this was years ago, but the reason those things don't happen anymore is because of how much we have weakened the institution of religion.  And when you look at countries that are still theocracies, you see things just as insane like the death penalty for insulting a prophet.

Yeah, violence happens, and getting rid of religion wouldn't solve every happen in the world.  But there are a lot of things that are specific to religion that would be rid of.  To go back to the catholic church example, are priests the only pedophiles?  No.  But they are the only pedophiles who have a whole congregation who is told from birth that they are to be trusted implicitly.  They are the only pedophiles who would be trusted to be alone with so many children despite having no sort of credentials to indicate that they should be alone with children and no system of accountability.  Their postion of divine authority made it far less likely for the Children to speak out..  They are the only pedophiles who have the backing of an organization that would hide them from justice.  

The priests were able to do what they did because of the obedience training.  That training and that dogma is a powerful tool that is and has wreaked havoc on the world.  Unless there is a compelling reason to keep this tool around, we should be rid of it.

As a muslim. We reject the bible -despite many truths in it- because of the man-made alterations over the years. It's why it's an easy target for critics of religion.

As for Noah, I do believe he's real, the story of the arc is real... Noah being drunkard is completely rejected however in Islam. That's a fabrication. Actually anything about 'prophets sinning' in all forms of the old and new testaments is rejected.

Yes I believe angels come, came and are on Earth.

I always feel left out when atheists go after the easy target.

I think Islam is just as easy a target.  The thing is that in the places where Islam is most commonly practiced, questioning Islam can literally be punished by death.  

In America Christianity is more prevalent, so it makes more sense to discuss it.  Furthermore, Islam is frankly unpopular in general here, so you don't have to really work very hard to get people to say it's false. 

To clarify though, when you say Bible do you mean the new testament, or the old?  Because from my understanding the Jewish version of the old testament was relatively consistent.  It is a bit similar to the Qu'ran in that there are rules set up about how it can be replicated.

Questioning the holocaust is illegal in 17 countries but that doesn't stop it's delusional deniers from questioning it. Questioning Islam and the Quran is welcomed by non-muslims. Questioning the wrong leaders who claim to be muslims can be fatal. And not liking something doesn't automatically make them false. I'm terrified of dildos that doesn't make them imaginary.

And yes I would definitely agree that the old testament is more consistant. The Bible/s on the otherhand are openly admitted to being changed. Jewish people however completely reject Jesus and Mohammed peace be upon them.

So... in the story of Noah, Noah built by far the largest wooden ship ever created.  Building such a ship would have been a nearly impossible tast with the amount of wood in the middle east at the time.  Even if it took 120 years as some claim, I still think gathering the wood alone would be impossible.  The ship itself would be larger than any wooden boat man would be able to build, even thousands of years later.  Any similar ship would need iron braces to hold together in normal circumstances. 

Logically yes, that's near impossible. I don't know the details of the Christian version of the story but the Quran mentions that the act of building the arc is actually a miracle by God. One narration mentions that the pieces of the arc were layed down for him in a way that made it easy to put together.

In the flood situation though, things are much more difficult.  The atmosphere can hold about enough water to create one cubic inch of rain globally at any one time.  For the flood to completely cover the Earth in the 40 days suggested, there would have to be 289 cubic miles of rainfall per second.  There is no way any ship is going to survive that, or that such an event wouldn't leave a MASSIVELY OBVIOUS geological footprint. Seriously, think of the WORST rainstorm you've ever seen.  Now, multiply that amount of water by about 10 billion.  That ship's going to do about as well as the titanic.  And, where did the water go?  That amount of water could not evaporate into the atmosphere.  

The whole world? I think you're anti-christian arguments are surfacing again. According to Islam, the punishment of the flood occured in the region of Noah's people who disbelieved his message. That. Even though the water is not as massive as covering all of earth. The Quran did mention that the earth swallowed it.

This just goes to show you're going to disagree regardless of what anyone says. But I'm fully aware of that and I'm willingly just adding to the discussion with no intentions of actually arguing. I love discussing Islam!

And, the animals.  Now, if you go with two of each species (there are some alternate translations) you have the problem that one infertile animal means that species is extinct.  Beyond that, you have the size of the thing.  There would need to be several hundreds of thousands of species or more if we were to account for the amount of diversity today.  There is not enough room.  

see above. Regional. I'm not christian. etc.

Even if we assume there were just 5000 animals, this would still be an impossible task.  Most animals will not survive a year in a dark enclosed space, especially with a deluge of water constantly tossing their boat around.  Meeting the dietary needs of all of these animals would be impossible.  A giant panda for instance eats about 40 pounds of bamboo in a day.  Even if we assume that the pandas go on a strict diet and eat 5 pounds of bamboo a day, you would still need about 3000 pounts of bamboo on the ship to keep them alive for a year.  This problem is even worse with meat eaters as there was no refrigeration.

And you also need water.  It's not like you could go out and get some of the water falling from the sky, so you'd need enough water to keep thousands of animals quenched for a year.

The amound of man hourse needed to feed all of the animals, give them water, eliminate their urine and shit, take care of any immediate medical needs, care for the young being born, and so on would be impossible, even if Noah and his family worked several times faster than the average human and never slept.

I'm just gonna pretend to be christian at this point. YES!! 370 DAYS IS WAYT TOO MUCH. But I heard, according to muzzlims that the duration of the flood wasn't nearly that long, and that the animals were quickly released.

Running a zoo is a complex process.  Something like the Bronx Zoo has hundreds of workers.  A small ark with non-ideal conditions, in the middle of a massive storm, with far more animals, could not feasibly survive.  In addition to diet, there are many other needs animals have that would not be met.  For example, simply eliminating their waste from the ship would be a near impossible task.  If we assume 5000 animals, the amount of waste produced would be in the neighborhood of 5 tons a day, or 10,000 pounds of animal excrement.  This would be a tough task for even the most modern of sewage systems.  Unless there was a hold leading directly to the ocean (and that would be a bad idea for very obvious reason). Someone was going to have to dump all of this waste overboard.  Someone would also have to clean all of the residue before it created a toxic environment.  

Of course, I'm wondering why Allah had to drown millions of animals anyway.  I mean were they sinners?  Seems like a dick move, Allah.

The Quran specifically states that only the disbelievers of that region was destroyed. Your inclusion of me to Christianity really helped me point out some key distinctions!

So, part of the reason I did this whole write up is because I'm fairly sure I'll bring up this up again to someone else.  If you want to take the Old Testament literally, then you have to believe in this story that defies the laws of logic and physics.  My point is... that with all that wacky stuff... Noah getting drunk is the part you find unbelievable?  Like, thousands of animals on an ark, ok.  An old dude getting drunk, OMG NO WAY!

It's more that muslims believe that prophets where above and beyond all acts of sin. Someone who does would never be chosen as a prophet.

And what is the justification for this belief [angels]?

One of the five pillars of faith (not the five pillars of Islam) is believing in angels. They were one of God's first creation before mankind or Jinn (the creatures that like to pretend they're ghosts and goblins and other legends according where you live... or if you're a christian devils).

so the highest sunni clerics arent a representative of islam?
or maybe you just pick the parts of islam for you that a sane human beeing could live with?

:D I know what it feels to be Christian under questioning after reading this :D