Thread Necro From a Dead Forum

[Recusant]

Seeing no reason to further derail Voter's already rather nebulous thread, I thought it would be better to start a new one.  In that thread, iSok pointed to a thread from the late lamented RDF forum, citing it as evidence that atheists blame religion for evil in the world.  Upon request, he kindly supplied a link to the thread.

Thank you very much for the link, iSok.  I see no reason to "let it rest."  You made an assertion, and I think it deserves to be examined. I think I understand better now what you meant.  The OP of that thread was childish and mean-spirited, no doubt about that. But it does not blame Islam for the collapse of the mosque. As for other posts:

Plus, there's the whole "God did it".
No doubt, many of them are going to take it as a sign from Allah.

This clearly points to Allah being the one responsible for the disaster.  So not pointing at religion at all, but at the deity worshipped by that religion. No doubt the actual interpretation by devout Muslims would be that Shaitan was responsible, if a supernatural entity was thought to be responsible at all.

...it's all God's will. The dead could even be considered as "shaheed" or martyrs as they died in a mosque. It's terribly sad because it covers up incompetence [of those who designed and built the mosque] with religious tripe.

In this post religion is pointed to, but only because the religious interpretation conjectured by the poster is viewed with sadness.

This is what happens when people turn their backs on Odin.

Joking aside, tragic.

Again, not religion, but rather a god is blamed for the tragedy.

Al hamdu l'illah! (sic)

This phrase is roughly traslated as "Praise to God."  The most negative interpretation is that the poster is praising Allah for the collapse.  Since the poster isn't Muslim, that's unlikely to be the correct interpretation though.  More likely it's an ironic echoing of the earlier posts which pointed to Allah as being responsible for the collapse of the mosque.

I see no one in the thread blaming Islam for the disaster.  Rather they either put the blame on Allah, or express sadness at the tragedy. (I didn't bother to quote all of the posts, because not all of them were relevant to the issue.)  If you want to point to atheists blaming religion for evil in the world, you can come up with much better examples than the thread you used.  I don't deny that atheists blame religion for evil, but quite often that blame is deserved.  However, as I said, that thread doesn't qualify even though I can see why you found it offensive.

[LegendarySandwich]

Rather they either put the blame on Allah

And when they do this, they're obviously joking. No atheist is seriously going to say "Allah made one of his mosques collapse and kill thirty-six of his followers! Praise be to Allah!"