Islam is NOT GARBAGE - Retorting Ridiculousness: UK Murder +27% In 2017; Govt Determined To Ruin What's Left By Embracing Islam

Islam is a garbage religion. If you subscribe to it, there's a good chance you are a garbage person. I'm sorry to have to be so blunt about it, but the numbers are in, and those numbers are terrifying.

So I've finally got access to my steemit account after weeks of waiting for it to be verified.

I've got some great ideas and a number of articles I want to get written; for example, I've a series of articles that I want to write on how blockchain technology has the potential to prevent nuclear armageddon. Rather than relying on MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) which has brought us to the brink of the end of the world on various occasions before - the Cuban Missile Crisis being the most obvious example - I will explore how blockchain technology could link nuclear weapons systems together to effectively nullify them, at least in theory.

I don't intend on writing fluff pieces for the simple purpose of getting up-votes but will instead create thought-provoking content that I hope readers will enjoy. Before I do go on to write about such things however, I must retort an article I've just read that calls Islam a garbage religion that has done no good for anyone.

The article can be found here:
(https://steemit.com/life/@lexiconical/uk-murder-27-in-2017-govt-determined-to-ruin-what-s-left-by-embracing-islam)

For full transparency I am not a Muslim. And I'm no social justice warrior. I'm no leftist either, those that find themselves towards the extreme ends of either end of the political spectrum are two sides of the same coin - in other words, the horseshoe theory (see below).

Quite simply, as a statistician, political scientist and published academic (and no, I'm certainly not a member of any sort of academic 'elite' either) I use data and statistics to arrive at the facts - raw numbers that must be substantiated by context and evidence because they are otherwise meaningless.

I understand that that may be difficult to comprehend and believe in this so-called 'post-truth' era but the awkward truth of the matter is that that statement is... errm... true. Anyone who says that facts don't exist, period, is a charlatan. Those that try to distort facts for their own agenda - financial or otherwise - is at best ignorant and, at worst, unscrupulous. Facts do exist, it just takes some considerable effort to unearth them.

And that is why I am rebuking @lexiconical's article below because a failure to do so perpetuates this post-truth, 'alternative facts' era, and allows it to thrive unchecked. Failing to challenge the status quo if you have the ability to do so makes one complicit in it; I refuse to be complicit.

The @lexiconical article bafflingly somehow conflates rising UK crime rates with a surge in the Muslim population. What evidence is presented for this? None whatsoever. All that is presented is a few pictures of radical Muslims holding banners which say that those who are not Islamic should be put to the death. This is in no way representative of the broader Muslim population - why not post pictures of Muslims doing nice things like this?....

.... or this....

... or even this

See? It's very easy to selectively choose images in a fallacious attempt to support one's point.

"But haven't you just done the same thing as @lexiconical did in his article?"

I hear you ask.

Yes, yes I have.

"So what's the difference then? Aren't you just as erroneous as him?"

No, no I am not.

Why?

Because @lexiconical is trying to argue that Islam makes all people that subscribe to it to be 'garbage' people that has never done any good for anyone and tries to use a few images, a tiny sample, to try and prove his point about the broader Muslim population.

I have used a tiny sample of a few select images to show that this is categorically untrue, as the pictures above illustrate how these people, acting as Muslims, are being kind, condemning terror and marching in support of victims of terrorism.

I would be wrong if I said that my images show that all Muslims are peace loving however.

This is categorically untrue, no religion is totally peaceful.

I am not trying to prove a broader point about an entire population, I am simply disproving a point wrongly made about a broader population.

In other words, I am falsifying, i.e proving false (see here for further information: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/falsification) the claim that Muslims, by being Islamic by definition, have never done anyone any good.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't think that anyone should be seeking knowledge on something as complex as religion when the person writing does not understand the basic tenets of grammar:

Scotland Yard is wasting their time (and citizen's[sic] money) going around town to Mosques[sic] to try and get "unreported hate crimes against Muslims" reported.

So, therefore, although I could go through and refute the unscientific evidence, and methodology, for each and every point upon which @lexiconical bases their baseless accusations, I won't because I think that would be giving the author far too much credit.

I've checked their account and I notice that they are a serial poster and earn hundreds of $ per article. It is most likely then that they simply wrote that article with the aim of inflaming people and stirring controversy just for some $$$ which is contrary to the purpose of this article.

Perhaps, therefore, they are much cleverer than I.

However, if spreading hatred is 'clever', I am happy to remain stupid.

But for those of you who value data, information and ergo, the truth, let's just look at this one point which is symptomatic of the logical disconnects in the author's article.

Which one of you politically correct losers wants to defend a 27% increase in homicides IN THE PAST YEAR ALONE? Maybe you'd prefer to take a crack at the 31% increase in knife crimes? The 20% increase in rapes?

For no logical reason whatsoever the writer attributes the above increases in crime in the UK directly with the increase in the Muslim population. This can be disputed in five words: correlation does not equal causation.

Did you know that in Britain more people died from being hit by horses in the 19th century than they did from automobiles in the 20th century?

I imagine that you didn't.

So, does this mean that horses are more dangerous than automobiles?

Well, no. A horse cannot hit someone at 70mph. A horse cannot ram through a crowd of people without stopping.

But if you conflate correlation with causation you would assume that horses are more dangerous than automobiles due to the greater number of deaths that the former caused.

So why did more people die from being hit by horses in 19th century Britain than did people from being hit by automobiles in 20th century Britain?

Answering this means discovering what the latent - aka unknown - variables are.

There are various variables that explain why this is the case but the variable that was most significant in producing less automobile deaths than horse deaths in Britain was: healthcare.

Free access to healthcare, and improvements in medical sciences resulted in fewer automobile deaths in the 20th century than horse deaths in the 19th.

So, perhaps, then, rather than more Muslims in the UK causing more crime since 2010, the much more likely cause for this rise in crime is due to to the fact that police budgets have faced an overall 18% reduction in real terms since 2010.
(https://fullfact.org/crime/police-funding-england-and-wales/)

TL;DR version: correlation does not equal causation (see this site for spurious, ridiculous correlations like the one @lexiconical produced; press the 'Discover a correlation' button at the bottom of the page to produce your own!).

I hope there is things in here that you have found useful, and that you have learned something for yourself from this article. Perhaps I should make a whole series of 'Retorting Ridiculousness' posts? Up-vote and let me know in the comments below if you think it's a good idea and if there's any topics you'd like me to cover.

Oh, and for those that actually want to understand what Islam is, how it started, and how some of the most commonly stated myths of Islam in Western societies - that, for example, all Muslims want to replace Western legal systems with Sharia law - are exactly that, just myths, then I kindly invite you to watch the videos below.

What is islam -

crash course world history

- sharia law vs penal code

'til the next time, I'll leave you with this thought:

Anyone who says religion as a concept, or any religious faith, is the reason for all the ills in the world is just as bad, if not worse, than those people who claim that religion is the answer to all of humanity's problems.