[benjdm]

My experience is that the moderate or liberal believers do not hold the source book (Koran / Bible) as authoritative. Which does put them on a weird footing. They are often pretty reasonable and positive people, but have little standing to challenge either the non-believers or the fundamentalists.

I've tried to argue that cherry picking from the Bible is no worse than not-cherry picking from the Bible. The Bible itself is the result of cherry picking, editing, and censorship from long ago. Other then historical accuracy, there is no good reason to favor one result of cherry-picking over another.