I get that. I'm Jewish. While I'm not an extreme believer, I believe in the framework for human life and dignity that the Torah creates. That Law isn't simply reducible to a "fear of God"; it's a living thing and a toolkit that teaches one generation after another methods to take wisdom and grounding from it and to seek something more, including the paths of rebels like Jesus and agnostics like Einstein.

We don't try to convert people, or even get them to understand. What other people think isn't our responsibility. It's generally not "you must use these tools this way or you're wrong". It's "here's what we got from this".

However, there is a fluctuating source of zealotry and revivalism in our own community that has parallels in Islam and in Christianity. The idea is a very ancient Israelite one, a desert religion tribal idea: There's one God and He's on Your Side. Everyone else is apostate, pagan. This took root way before there were Christian or Muslim concepts of Hell or Heaven. You don't even need those things to condemn other people. There is judgment in Judaism, it's just not generally on the level of converting or killing people who disagree with the beliefs.

I'd submit that more people should be bothered by it if they have the idea that their belief is the only right one.

You're right, but the religious retort to that would be that secular people are miserable and therefore less likely to marry and reproduce. Whereas I'm not sure why that should be true. Sure, secular people don't have a command to reproduce, so maybe taking away the command structure just reduces the likelihood; and I guess that's the selection bias you're talking about. But prior to organized religion, people were reproducing like rabbits, so there's got to be something else.

> the religions that survive today

Didn't most religions allow slavery? Islam, Christians, Jews, Hindus... All had rules on how to treat your slave but never printed slavery should be abolished. Funny how no major religion allows slavery any more isn't it

> Even if, in the past, we've had stuff like the crusades and the dark ages i

It is interesting that both those examples (which are the "obvious" ones people pick") was really anything like what people imagine then to be like. The "dark ages" were dark in terms of a lack of records in western Europe as the Roman Empire collapsed and the imperial systems disappeared. Many historians argue that life mostly improved for ordinary people, the status of women improved, slavery was replaced by serfdom etc. The crusades started in response to a call for help from people who were being invaded, and were at least partly defensive: at the time they started the Arab Empires had occupied most Spain, most Mediterranean islands, parts of southern Italy, had invaded France etc. While they were not entirely virtuous they were not without reason either.

> While we could talk about tens of thousands of deaths in terror attacks from religious cracknuts who love to kill as many non-believers as possible.

A pretty small proportion of Muslims support religious violence. The extremists exist and are powerful or widely supported in some countries, but its no usual.

> while another religion, according to the latest published World FactBook from the CIA, has as many as 30% of its followers worldwide approving sharia laws.

What do they mean by that? It varies. Survey wording can mean it can even include following rules of personal conduct. It often means religious rulings over religious matters - not very different from Catholic marriage tribunals. Even where people want it to have the force of law, they may want that only for Muslims. While the extremists exist, they are far fewer than 30%. Most of that 30% is concentrated in a few countries, although the fact that some of those countries are very wealthy has meant they can fund the spread of those ideas.

The War on Iraq may not fit the definition of terrorism, being government actions, but it killed a shit load of people and was driven by religious convictions with flimsy or non-existent evidence:

https://san.com/cc/george-w-bush-saw-iraq-war-as-crusade-dec...

https://www.thirteen.org/worldfocus/blog/2009/05/27/religiou...

Be honest, please; the arrests were not for "praying in your head" they were for repeatedly breaching a buffer zone and actively refusing a request to move on.

eg: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo (and one or two others)

"in the last 100 years how many terror attacks have been committed in the name of the christian god?"

Depends how you count, the war on terror, that in reality mostly just brought terror to blow up weddings etc. was and is justified as a crusade by certain christian politicians. And quite some other wars had those elements as well, even the Nazis claimed they officially fought in the name of god against the atheist communists (and many did believe that, viewed Hitler as doing god's will).

Apart from that, check out The Lord's Resistance Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army

Or just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism

Why focus only on big, showy acts of violence? Christian-influenced violence happens countless of times everyday, such as a gay kid getting beat up because some other kids hear their pastor maligning him every week. Christian violence happens every day.

I'm cushioning my statements as much as possible, if you read my other post here.

I'm aware of where most of the zealotry comes from at the moment.

I'm not trying to be unfair to Christians or to Christianity, which in large part has renounced violence as a means of converting people.

Most Christians from before the early-20th century, would consider your interpretation of Christianity as mostly heretical. They very willingly forced Christianity into anyone who wasn't, as well as into anyone who wasn't of their particular branch.

The text is the same, as is, presumably, the Jesus, so either they had understood it all wrong and current Christians understand it correctly, or the other way around. Which is it?

IMHO, those are two distinct religions. Actual Christianity is the old one. The modern one isn't Christianity, but European Enlightenment in Christian clothing. And yes, the later is much better than the original.

EE also provides Judaism clothing, Buddhist clothing, and other such clothings, which is why it works so well. In fact, it also has a relatively recently developed Islamic clothing, though adoption is still limited. Hopefully it'll expand over time.