those same people to be intolerant of this thread too!

Kinda inconvenient for his agenda.

"Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled."

Qur'an 9:29

After all, one of the reasons they were written was to assure one group of believers they were better than everyone else.

Not much in the "red letter" sections.

The Old Testament is a nasty, dark place.

Here's just a few from the book of Matthew:

Making sure the fans stay on message by threatening them with retribution and mayhem if they consort with anyone who might present new ideas that question the dogma.

Here's one that shows just how sick God is:

After God has sufficiently hardened the Pharaoh's heart, he kills all the firstborn Egyptian children. When he was finished "there was not a house where there was not one dead." Finally, he runs out of little babies to kill, so he slaughters the firstborn cattle, too. 12:29

On another note, compare the treatment of the Chinese government to certain members of their population, to the treatment of the Amalekites.

One thing that's not is religion lends itself extremely valuable as a tool for stoking intolerance. Even if you ignore the numerous citations for intolerance in all sorts of religious tomes, it's pretty hard to ignore that hate is preached from the pulpit pretty much universally. I suppose some sleep better at night convincing themselves otherwise, but it seems as if that level of delusion would require a considerable amount of time and effort.

At other times, it enables and promotes peaceful coexistence. It all depends on who is interpreting whatever scriptures or holy writings that are the particular religion's foundation.

Just took at the different ways different denominations of Christianity look at, say, LGBTQ people. Depending on which church you're in, you can hear a message of acceptance or a diatribe of hatred and blame.

Religion, all too often, normalizes hatred and malice toward the "others." Defenders of particular religions generally point to peaceable denominations as examples, neglecting to mention all of the examples of the opposite kind. Defenders of religion in general tend to seek out messages of acceptance and tolerance, while ignoring messages of hatred and distrust.

Why is religion particularly to blame for promoting intolerance? Because when it does so, it justifies that intolerance by quoting scripture which is typically considered to be a deity's instructions to humans. That additional weight of authority makes people feel OK about hating the "others." "God said it was OK to hate them."

That is not to say that other human associations, societies, and cultures do not also promote intolerance. Projection is a common feature of many such groups.

Reason and logic are not involved with scriptures that originated with a supposed supernatural deity.

that religion is good and pure and perfect, and only defective evil men "misuse" it. That view also contains the bigoted notion that all bad people are bad because they're not following religion properly. True believers are never bad, IOW. It's the heathens and non-believers who are bad.

Plenty of otherwise decent individuals have engaged in atrocious behavior because their holy book ordered it. Loving parents who reject their gay children, for instance. Religion *CAN* be responsible for intolerance. Pretending otherwise is foolish and wrong.

The one in question would never concede religion *CAN* be responsible for intolerance, but even if it could (and it can't obviously ), then the fallback position is atheism is no different because of those evil Chinese atheists and Stalin argle bargle. Naturally this relies on the targeted audience being too stupid to realize atheism has exactly zero doctrine and/or dogma that even suggests intolerance, much less commands it.