Then you think the opposite of what all empirical facts show. For self-labeled adherents to all the Abrahamic faiths, actual personal commitment to one's religious ideas is consistently positively correlated with support for more "conservative" and authoritarian policies that impose those religious ideas upon others.
I'm confused... is this an empirical fact you are quoting? Because that right there looks like a GENERALIZATION, not an "empirical fact."
An empirical fact is something you learn based on collecting data from an external source. It is NOT something you extrapolate based on anecdotes or media reports.
So you are telling me that a Jehovas Witness who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you have evidence this tends to be true?
You are telling me that a Mennonite who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you have evidence this tends to be true?
You are telling me that a Quaker who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you have evidence this tends to be true?
You are telling me that a Jew who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you have evidence this tends to be true?
You are telling me that a Methodist who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you have evidence this tends to be true?
You are telling me that a Conservative Evangelical who is personally committed to his religious ideas will support authoritarian policies to impose his ideas on others; do you even have evidence that THIS tends to be true?
And to be absolutely clear: there is personal conviction of religious faith and moral conviction as a faith-driven political issue. These are separate things, and different sects of Christianity and Islam approach them in different ways.
Those who want to limit religion to "personal choices" not only pray less often (which was shown in the PEW data I linked in the OP), but other research shows they attend religious services less often, they report thinking about God or their religion less often, using their faith less in their daily decisions, and have more doubts about whether their own beliefs are true.
And in between "limit religion to personal choices" and "spread god's will over all the land" there are those for whom political activism is not even a significant religious activity. This is also true in Islam.
You are confusing the preference to limit religious faith to the personal level (thus keep it out of politics), with having a strong personal faith that the God of the Bible or Quran actually exists.
Not at all. I am recognizing that faith-based political activism is NOT a major tenet of the Christian religion and is actually a niche activity that becomes relevant only to a small number of highly prolific religious sects. Homosexuality and abortion are wedge issues for religious conservatives that overshadow just about all other possible issues; they are not, on the other hand, all that relevant to the Christian religion and are mentioned rarely -- if at all -- in scripture.
Put simply: believing that gay marriage should be illegal has nothing whatsoever to do with one's belief that God exists. That's a political and moralistic belief, not necessarily religious one.
Many Muslims, also, have political and moralistic beliefs that have little or nothing to do with their religion. The Pashtuns are the most obvious example of this, with the concept of Honor Killings and acid attacks and the constant threatening and/or murder of girls for attending schools. These are based on Islamized Pashtun tribal culture and have little or nothing to do with Islam or the Quran. The same is true of Boko Haram, whose campaign against education has a lot more to do with reactionary anti-westernism than it has to do with Islam or the Quran.
On the other hand, YOU are clearly confusing "strong personal faith in God" with "political conformity." It is just as obvious that not everyone who participates in faith-based religious activism strongly believes in the existence of God or the truth of the scriptures; Kim Davis set the gold standard for this: refusing to obey a court order to "uphold the sanctity of marriage" is deliciously ironic coming from a woman who has been divorced and remarried four different times. We can plainly tell from her actions that Kim Davis does not believe in the sanctity of marriage, nor does she believe her previous marriages were any more divinely-sanctioned than the same-sex marriages she refused to license. Hers is, therefore, a political belief, not a genuine religious one.
In all the monotheisms, those who support keeping faith only a "personal" and "private" matter, are those that do so because they doubt the validity of that faith in both factual and moral matters
That looks like another generalization of yours. There are, again, very well known Christian denominations that do not meddle in politics AS A RULE. Even aside from those are individual Christians that are actually extremely devout and also do not participate in political activism. You are attempting to draw a correlation between a lack of activism and a lack of strong religious conviction that a) isn't actually supported by data and b) doesn't hold true for denominations that do not put a premium on political activity.
