http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/europe/italy-migrants-christians-thrown-overboard/

I did not read the article. My question is: Did they throw the Christians overboard because of religious differences, or because there was not enough room on the boat for all of them?

More violence from the most disgusting and violent horrid little religion on the planet. Muslim scum.

It's also unclear from the article whether they found any bodies. To me it very much sounds like the Christians on board simply made up the story. I hope there will be a fair trial (if there is even enough evidence warranting a trial in the first place).

That site instantly drove me away with not one but TWO huge pushy popups (AND it withdrew the article text when I didn't play along with the first popup, after which the very gall of the second popup was just cringeworthy) - you wouldn't be so kind as to copy and paste the relevant content, perchance?

I find the entire article to be ridiculous. I think it's nothing more than confusing correlation and causation. And there are probably numerous catalysts along the way that lead to the increase in engineering positions within these groups. I don't think it says anything about engineers, or people who would become engineers, versus people who would become terrorists. Particularly if the pattern is specific to Islamists. All it shows is that they're missing information to explain it (though even the article does a pretty good job of casting doubt on itself, making it pretty much a NO-OP read).

Sounds like somebody needs Mozilla Firefox (or Debian Iceweasel), AdBlock Plus, Cookie Monster (v1.x), [FlashStopper], Ghostery, and NoScript. I get no popups and the article content is not even hidden.

The article never claims to answer the question of why there is a pattern. They are merely pointing out that there is something going on that seems to need explaining. The headline is ridiculous and does not reflect the article, but that is quite common as article authors generally have no say in titles.

I didn't hear anything that suggested there was a pattern there either. In a few carefully chosen cases they were able to show a higher level of engineers than one would expect. OK, now lets take all terrorist organizations influenced by Islam and see if every single little group shows this pattern. If not, and I suspect not, then there is no pattern at all. Perhaps the most infamous attacks involved higher numbers of engineers, which wouldn't be surprising at all since they'd probably have the skills to pull off things that others would never be able to conceive.

I completely enjoy the absence of certainty or absolute truth. On the contrary, things get to be problematic when not enough attention is paid to the uncertainty of an idea.

Should Islam engineers now be scrutinized as more likely to be terrorists than non-engineers? What other point is there to the data article if not that? What is the point of this article?

There's nothing wrong with skepticism. It's a very healthy outlook on life. There may be a pattern, but I've seen insignificant evidence of it. There's nothing to take away from the article at all.

I don't think anybody is saying "Muslims don't do that." In fact, I count approximately 4 people (I guess 5 counting you) that believe that they're guilty. 2 of us question (read: scrutinize) the story since we lack most of the facts and the story is rather suspicious.

Why would you do that? In particular, while fleeing from poverty, war, and destruction and knowing your destination was a predominantly Christian nation with government and law enforcement? And why didn't the Muslims kill the remaining survivors? Or if the survivors were too powerful, why didn't they protect the Christians thrown overboard? The whole story is just too short to be meaningful.

That's exactly the kind of treatment that priests get. How many priests accused of molesting children are in prison or even saw trial? How many were just swept under the rug and moved to a new posting in a different country? Of course, society may have eventually broken down and condemned them, in part, but I think it took several years before people were willing to accept that there may be a problem and I still don't think that society as a whole grasps it...

FTFY. It isn't based solely on their religion, at least on my part. On the contrary, it would be dangerous not to defend people that are likely to be discriminated against before the facts come out. If it was a rich, white CEO I would probably take the opposite stance knowing that society and law enforcment would likely take his side, but in this case I know that people are going to be lining up to crucify (snicker) the Muslims based solely on prejudice. By all means, give them a fair trial, and if they're found guilty then the law applies (insert: although where exactly the drownings take place might affect which law has jurisdiction). Of course, giving them a fair trial may be a challenge to begin with.

Agreed. Nobody said not to scrutinize their alleged actions. I think that the only defense they've gotten here is, "[without the facts it's wrong to take sides and assume their guilt.]"

Edgar: why messing present life with dead people fantasy stories ? I'm, like some other, not a believer. Putting religion related text in some debate is like asking for a flame war derailing. Internet it is. I hope you understand that it makes a debate go wild and not going fine.

And regarding the OP, what seem so incredible ? I mean, if there was at least two group of different people and at a moment there is a need to throw some people off the boat, it looks evident that group A will want to throw out group B, and maybe group B want the same about group A.

Now put what you want for an excuse to join one of these group, like confession, and you're done.

It's horrible, but nothing spiritual. Just regular humans killing each others. What's left is just excuses to justify the killing.

According to the gospel of Barnabas (which was removed from most versions of the Bible), Judas was the guy that was crucified and not Jesus himself. Which also explains the whole resurrection thing - he never had died in the first place

I think it was actually a debate between crucifixion (which was pretty common) and being impaled on a spike.

There are lots of translations that differ on key details like that because they were all written years (hundreds?) after the events. The Bible is the biggest, most amazing version of the "Telephone Game" in history.

That being said, I'm not going into a bible thread anymore than this shallow end of the pool.

There seems plenty of evidence to the contrary.

The very first page of results for the gospel of barnabas shows several sources that immediately question any idea that it was written by someone who knew Jesus. In fact the gospel seems dated to the medieval period.

Read the rest of the article. Sounds like a complete fabrication to me. :/

Uhm. What? Maybe you're thinking of Daniel.