Hi Mario,

***H: "Haven't lived in a Muslim country, but I have visited Muslim countries. However, I don't see your point. Have all atheists lived in an atheist country?" The difference is you're presenting your idea here as valid due to its psychological usefulness whereas atheists/agnostics aren't making a statement (usually) about the way life 'should' be.***

My point to Tom is that we cannot dismiss our philosophical position about religion in general simply because we don't have day to day experience of one particular religion, anymore than we should deny a particular philosophical position (e.g., atheism) simply because we haven't lived in an atheist society. I did not defend Islam's psychological usefulness, but rather I defended an Islam core that there are treasures to the religion that should be shared among all people. I'm not too familiar with Islam, but I have read enough important writers to see that it does have treasures that we can all benefit from. Rejecting these treasures simply because of sociological effects is not a good means to make a judgement. We have to look at the merit of each religion from the people who know their own treasures. If they want to cite non-appealing attributes (from our perspective) then it won't be effective in passing those memes to us. Over time, we generally propagate the most appealing memes of our beliefs which also happen to translate into higher principles of that religion.

Warm regards, Harv