No, but it's not that hard to know doctors when they are in your own family. Or study what doctors in general will do when confronted personally with death and suffering. And its not what you described.

Neither are you apparently. Since you're not a doctor.

"I believe that you have a common bias in developed countries, where you find it socially acceptable to criticize Christianity (as the dominant religion in your society) but feel that criticism of other religions is a sign of bigotry"

As far as that point. I believe the problem is that most people in developed countries, no matter how enlightened they feel themselves to be, do not understand other cultures and thus their immigrants, seeing them as interlopers and strangers. The xenophobia that you often demonstrate is thus typical. But it's little different in character from that directed at Catholics in the US 100-150 years ago, or Jews up until WW2, or Mexicans today. And it is little more complicated to apply it to people living in foreign countries. But when I see Rick Perry attempting to roll Turkey in with Syria or Hamas or Iran, I know there's a problem with how people are perceiving reality.

It is accurate to oppose cruelty and violence and oppression no matter what it emanates from. It is inaccurate to presume that this oppression because it has publicly identified sources (treatment of women for example in some Islamic countries, like Afghanistan/Saudi Arabia) has common cause everywhere by dint of the supposed source, or that all such peoples are hostile to the general impression of liberalising democratic values. What is found to be the case in psychology suggests that the hostility demonstrated by some Muslims is little different than the hostility demonstrated by Christian conservatives and that their source is not ultimately some religious grounds to object to a free and open society where people are treated with relative equality in their rights and privileges, but rather that the entire outside world is perceived as threatening to their in-group and its perceived beliefs. This is why there are movements to put prayer in school or home school children and censor everything under the sun. The character of violence only becomes evident where other methods of resistance to this trend have obviously failed, or where violence is applied to impose it. Most resistance in Afghanistan for instance is hardly that of "I loves the Taliban", but rather "I hate foreigners and get them out of my land". A type of resistance that I'm sure most Americans would understandably desire to take up were there to be many foreign bases and military forces on our soil and many civilians killed by said forces. A similar disposition occurs in Israeli occupied territories where rights and privileges are not expansive, property is controlled and seized for "others", and so on. To suggest that this is all inherently religiously motivated misses the point. It is little different in character and flavor than Irish resistance to British occupation or Yugoslavian or Hungarian or French resistance movements countering Nazis or even American Indians resisting US forces and settlers moving west.

You are unresponsive to the idea that violence is very often politically motivated (suicide bombings have a long tradition in anarchist movements, and for anti-occupational/repressive forces like the Viet Cong, Tamil Tigers, etc. Terrorism itself has a similar history), that Islam is most often practiced with non-violence as a major function by individuals just as Christians tend to (Turkey, Indonesia, Bosnia, most diaspora Muslims in Western countries), that certain traditions (honor killings), that the behaviors you rightly abhor and decry are not limited to Islamic societies both in the modern day or historically and generally have other causes than religious commands (patriarchal machismo). Your point about underdeveloped countries is noteworthy. What interests me is why if you would agree it is a primary driver of violence that this imputes violence and cruelty to Islam by definition. As you are noting below, clearly violence and cruelty in such places are not limited to Muslims. Why the sob story that impugns the people's religious beliefs for things that have other causal agents then (and impugns those beliefs when many other people who share them do not act violently and cruelly).

I'm not sure why these are unpersuasive facts of the world around you. You haven't/don't respond to any of them, and your alternative reaction is extreme.

Thereby, I am comfortable labeling you a bigot on this point, yes. Even if you hate Christians too, or Buddhists or whoever, your demands for blood and open conflict suggest a stronger animosity worthy of the term.

At the very least, it suggests an intellectual laziness in picking your enemies as an agnostic/atheist when selecting the battleground on which that fight will occur. By selectively reading text and interpreting actions on solely religious/cosmological grounds, you're doing no better than the Christian or Muslim radicals that oppose you on these issues.

Also, you are not "criticizing Islam". You are criticizing Muslims, or people who call themselves such. It is accurate to criticize putatively Christian people when they do silly and ridiculous things or especially cruel and violent things, just as it is for Muslims. But you are not actually tackling any theological issues or canonical statements relating to whether their faith is what caused them to be violent. You are stating such as fact without applying any rigorous logic behind it. That is, in my mind, rather prejudicial.

In my view, the problem is less an issue of their religious beliefs per se and more a general desire to commit violence or oppression whereby religion's strong in-group/out-group dynamic can be just as easily exploited as any other ideological disposition to attack others (nationalism, communism, etc). The problem is a human nature to a) become strongly affiliated with social groups like religious institutions b) to become hostile to other social groups perceived as competing with your own. It is not a problem specifically limited to any one religion, but rather is an inherent issue with human beings more broadly. That's why I perceive a problem with your statements as being inaccurate critiques.

I would argue that you are biased against any religion period, yes, to be fair.

But I would also argue that this bias is stronger against Muslims, yes. You haven't publicly called for the imminent genocide of 2 billion Christians in response to the violence and repression perpetrated by some of their number. Just the Muslims. The level of animosity is therefore much higher in the one than the other.

Also, my previous reply (ies) DID attempt to refute your claims on the matter. Even the point about Christians matters as refutation as it points out the manner of use in religion for violent means is a problem mostly limited to crazy people or underdeveloped countries with higher levels of superstitious nonsense that is often unrelated to their religious teachings (genital mutilations and witch burning are generally regional superstitions and cultural, not religious).

This is the opposite of what actually happens in real life.

Doctors and former doctors when they are diagnosed with terminal ailments or suffer grievous injuries do not adopt the same "I want every hero measure you can throw at me!" attitude that the general public takes. They tend to know the limitations of modern medicine against death and accept what would be deemed "palliative care". That is, that they worry far more about limiting their pain and suffering than on averting their imminent demise. They usually have "do not resuscitate", "no vegetable" orders in living wills, and so on. They also do the same when they are selected to advise on medical matters for their families in similar scenarios. They would rather a spouse or loved one die peacefully and as lucidly as possible than be covered in plastic tubes and incisions and bruises from aggressive medical interventions that usually stand very low chances of working in the first place.

I'd hardly say that that is a survival instinct in action when death is accepted and not feared, much less at a "maximum". Suffering is far worse than death for people who understand both.

Ak-47s may not be free. But in sub-Saharan Africa you can get one for a sack of grain. High explosives also aren't that expensive. You can make quite deadly devices out of household items or farming equipment.

What is expensive is training people to use either correctly and accurately against others.

As far as the sources of that funding.
1) How much do you think opium costs?
2) There are radical political institutions in the US. Usually funded by crazy rich people. That doesn't mean that these are "mainstream" institutions. The support of a handful of crazy rich people with oil or drug money is not the same as religious backing from theology endorsed by millions or even billions of people.
3) Lots of successful terrorist organisations have social or political wings that are non-violent social institutions in areas that are impoverished or oppressed by others (ie, Hamas does this in Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood is very successful at this in Egypt and its case, does not endorse terrorist actions like suicide bombing. And that is far from a mainstream Islamic group)
4) Turkey. Indonesia. Etc. Constantly overlooked are more liberal Muslim countries.
5) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15044797
Also ignored are things like that. People like you are always pushing the notion that terrorism enjoys broad levels of support from ordinary people. In fact, it is ordinary Muslims who tend to suffer most from such actions and who oppose them. CAIR likewise has issued similar proclamations. That they are ignored in favor of a more favorable story by people like you when consuming news is not my fault. Such stories exist and they are popular views within the Muslim world and community.

I don't wholeheartedly support so.cialists. The point about Vietnam is that it was a waste of money and troops for us to be fighting there. Not that commun.ists are teh awesome as you seem to believe that anyone who opposed said war must believe to be the case. The point is that it was a waste of our time and resources and accomplished nothing, and could never have accomplished anything of justifiable value to American interests no matter how the war was conducted or for how long. Even the most Manichean struggles against the Soviet Union involved multiple axis available to attack and destroy the Soviet bloc and sphere of influence, all of which were available well before sending troops into a hostile territory.

Those who commit said atrocities are indeed scum regardless of politics or religion. That's the point I've been making and both you and A/C have been ignoring, deeming such points irrelevant in favor of making a broad sweeping generalisation about people who have a different faith than any of us here as the sole basis for said atrocities.

I'm pretty sure the witchcraft thing does have orders from local priests or pastors and established local church institutions in Africa. A similar problem abounds in Uganda with killing gays (and there from Anglicans and from the actual church hierarchies in country).

The problem is real, and is really caused by some people (mis) interpreting their religious faith as a command to kill others. Killing "witches" is a long tradition for Christians. Are you presuming that the Salem witch trials, among others, was not emanating from some sort of religious command? (this is not actually what does it, but the religion thing always gets played up. The real cause is usually economic instability in agrarian societies from droughts or harsh winters).

The fact that it makes you uncomfortable that some people run around burning and pillaging and killing in the name of their faith is understandable. What's amusing is that you're so quick to try to hide it or dismiss it when it is your own faith (broadly speaking) and you don't seem capable of extending the same luxury to others who don't share your beliefs.

"The Christians attempt o divorce themselves from the events, claiming they couldn't be real Christians, blah, blah , blah. "

Some points
1) Christians often do not have to be bothered to divorce themselves from radical Christianists who act violently or say and support bigoted things. It is simply assumed that all Baptists are not incriminated for the actions of a few. Why is this same logic not appropriate for Muslims? Many Muslims in fact do not support suicide attacks or terrorism more broadly as an order of their faith.
2) When there are protestations to this effect, they are either ignored or seen as some sort of stealth campaign.
3) Suicide bombing has been a tactic of warfare by minimally armed insurgent forces for decades. Tamil Tigers used it for instance in Sri Lanka. It could be much easier to presume that the problem is political, with religion being abused and contorted for political ends than to presume that the problem is religious. There is a very high amount of circumlocutions required to contort opinion into it being a problem localized to Islam when the events you depict (suicide bombing, honor killings, abuse toward women/gays, etc) happen all around the globe. With or without Islam being a factor. Are we to assume that it was Islam that caused the Tamil insurrection or honor killings in Rio de Janeiro? You might be on to something more tangible by identifying developed western nations versus backwater third world countries than by identifying Islam, and in particular "mainstream Islam", as promoting violence but you seem far too dogged at pursuing the latter course. That's the problem here.

The second problem is in misidentifying what "mainstream Islam" promotes. Again, like PD, you're much more comfortable identifying the views of radicals as those of everyone else. The reason I kept bringing up Christianity is to point out that we will tend to give Christians a relative pass when radicals act out in Jesus' name. We don't for Muhammed's. There's a lack of equivalence here that I find disturbing.