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Do we need religion to have ethics? Is it possible that a world without religion can be, on the whole, a better place to live?
- Created by Zach West
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Keith:
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“You mean the plan that the buffoons who are searching grandmas at the airport and collecting data on 300 million American citizens but consciously making mosques off limits?”
Actually, I mean the plan that resulted in this:
“The U.S. government’s sweeping surveillance programs have disrupted more than 50 terrorist plots in the United States and abroad, including a plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, senior government officials testified Tuesday.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/officials-surveillance-programs-foiled-more-than-50-terrorist-plots/2013/06/18/d657cb56-d83e-11e2-9df4-895344c13c30_story.html
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This story is bogus. The government conveniently will not give any details about these supposed plots.
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How can you so blindly trust the government?
Our founders feared a tyrannical lying government more than any other threat. They understood that a big and unchecked government will lies at every turn.
Ours certainly is doing that routinely now, even showing open contempt for its own Congress who represent the people as it covers up for programs and plans that don't work and have a singular purpose of spending taxpayer money to enrich special interests and the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who collude with them.
50 plots foiled? Show us the proof. We have a right to know what's going on when our own individual privacy and liberty hangs in the balance.
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Sometimes I just don't get it. You folks jump with joy and treat as gospel anything a right-wing blogger produces from a source he hasn't provided any links to (and often proves to be inaccurate at best and a full-on hoax at worst), and yet you categorically dismiss statements from the very people who you believe protect you from the bogeyman that is Islam (Or do they not protect you? If so, how are we not dead yet--how have the evil Muslims not gotten to all of us? This is all very confusing...).
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Ah, I see you adjusted your post, so I'll do the same.
I definitely do not trust the government blindly; in fact, I'm quite distrustful of it. But I also don't trust internet rumors. The web is littered with government conspiracies and doomsday policies that were ultimately--shocker--the product of misinformation and/or a desire for attention.
I haven't seen a lot of credible sources regarding this new mosques-are-verboten policy. What I have seen is independently-collected data regarding terrorist plots foiled in this country in the last decade.
I have no idea whether the NSA is telling the truth, and I'd also like to see proof. But I know our government has pulled it off in the past. I also know your criticism of its counterintelligence efforts are based on about as credible sources as a spy agency who spies on its own people.
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So you don't see a conflict of interest when the government spends $10Billion on a server farm and analysts to collect every phone number of every person in the U.S., every e-mail address, and duration of every call...and then claims that if foiled 50 plots with the technology?
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Why not have them wiretap the whole world to stop 150 plots?
This weak-minded rationale behind this claim is ridiculous. I'm surprised they have the audacity to bring out these fools to spout these idiocies.
The reason they are doing all this is simply to enrich themselves...personal self interest...the American Way, except it's not of the free market but of the crony, tyrannical, socialist modality.
They couldn't even stop the Tsarnev brothers, so what makes you think they actually foiled plots using phone number and call-duration information?
Urge the government to provide details of these investigations, Zach. Use a bit of independent thought to infer true motive rather than reading and believing whatever a left-leaning media spoon feeds you.
I thought you were all about empirical evidence? Here you are taking the word of a lifetime technocrat who won't give the most rudimentary of facts to back up his story.
Zach,
Take a look at this one...U.S. Federal Government thugs showing up at a whistleblower's home and threatening her teenage children. This is more like China than America.
Leftist liberals will stop at nothing to intimidate their opponents. History has proved this true too many times to count, and now it is going on at heretofore unheard of levels in the U.S. of A.
http://clashdaily.com/2013/06/state-dept-whistleblower-seeks-congressional-protection-after-being-harassed/
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I actually agree with much of what you say here, and I certainly don’t accept that number as fact. I am equally displeased with the NSA’s tactics based on what I know about them. Remember, though, that this conversation began with you asserting that federal law enforcement agencies are forbidden to monitor mosques. I’m still trying to find a credible source to support that claim.
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I have no doubt that the NSA programs help prevent terrorism attacks but be careful before you go attributing the 50 plots foiled directly to the two programs that have been in question the last few days. Please listen to the caveats,
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http://www.cnn.com/video/standard.html#/video/world/2013/06/18/lead-leak-and-security-nsa-head-snooping-saved-us-50-times.cnn?iref=allsearch
And there were other caveats that caught my attention when I was watching the hearings. Yes, the two programs added data but that is a far cry from the seemingly categorical "have disrupted more than 50 terrorist plots" you quoted.
Also, the focus of the entire hearings seemed to be almost excluively on one of the two programs, just the one that by its nature cannot provide the actual content of the communication. The other, the email one, was treated almost as if it didn't exist.
Moreover, in the Boston case we know of far more substantial information available to them just from what is available in the public domain, including two heads up, than the very limited information supposedly offered by the two programs, yet they failed to stop that bombing.
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James:
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“How could you think that anyone on these pages would believe that you could read, interpret, and understand the Quran on your own, when this site is replete with page after page of you mis-reading, mis-interpreting, and mis-understanding the Bible, regardless of all the efforts the Christians and others here undertook to help you understand?”
All very much in your humble opinion. We once had a few moderate Christians here who seemed to agree quite eagerly with my understanding of the Bible (just not my opinion on its validity as a truth proposition), but they were driven off after a few weeks. This does not seem to be a place for moderates. In any case, I also recall having some great discussions with both Nancy and Bradley regarding the Bible. I’m sorry you feel that way about my understanding, but again, that’s very much your opinion—especially since we’ve never taken an in-depth exegesis together.
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James:
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"I believe you see your position as the noble one..."
Actually, I thought (and still think) of it as the practical one. Only here, contrasted with some of the more extreme viewpoints, could it ever be elevated to something as profound as "noble." It's actually pretty funny, when you think about it: An agnostic from Texas forced by sheer principle to defend Islam, derided ad nauseum by Christian fundamentalists who clamor for violent retribution against Muslims while extolling the loving and peaceful influences of their own religion.
Life doesn't lie, I guess...
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Zach:
"Christian fundamentalists who clamor for violent retribution against Muslims while extolling the loving and peaceful influences of their own religion..."
Statements such as this one, misbegotten claims hatched in Sesamestan's Sesame Street University fiction-as-reality class, are precisely what confirm beyond a reasonable doubt that you are a colicky, clueless, cowardly and cocky kid -- a pretender to serious thought, but a pitiable clown at the end of the day.
Good grief! Or, OMG!! There you go again...Posting without changing your soiled diaper...It isn't funny, Zach. It stinks!!!
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To point out every lie and distortion you put forth. "An Agnostic from Texas forced by sheer principle to defend Islam, derided ad nauseam by Christian fundamentalists who clamor for violent retribution against Muslims while extolling the loving and peaceful influences in their own religion."
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Who clamors for "violent retribution against Muslims?" Unless you are eliding the inconvenient fact that what I said was that Israel has had a long-standing response to the wanton slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists of striking back at the terror leaders, their foot soldiers, and even their families when these animals seek refuge in their midst to avoid their comeuppance.
Reagan hit Ghadaffy's home in Libya killing one of his sons in response to his defiant stance in support of Islamic terror cells. Obama sent a drone to give al-Awalki a one way ticket to paradise in Yemen, and also sent his 15-year-old son, an American citizen as well, to paradise.
This is the narrowly targeted, purposeful response I support; you continue to lie about anyone here clamoring for violent retribution against Muslims -- you made up that lie, attributed it to me and God knows who else, and then attacked "Christian fundamentalists" instead of yourself.
No more games, bro. No more games. You have been outed by your silly and desperate pattern of falsehoods.
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Yes, you (incorrectly) stated that the Israeli counterterrorism policy involves killing the families of terrorists, and then you repeatedly applauded that fact. That is quite clearly a call for violent retribution against Muslims. If you can’t understand the meaning of your own words, I can’t do much to help you.
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On a different but related not, are you really in your mid-forties? “OMG!!” and “bro?” I’m genuinely curious now. I’ve never, ever seen these expressions and thought patterns from anyone over the age of thirty-five. What high-profile cases have you worked on? What firm do you practice with?
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I use whatever language I please, because I can. And there you go again, looking to deflect attention from your own woeful paucity of coherence and gravitas on the issues under deliberation here to ask us how many live terrorists plots we've thwarted, if we ever met a real-life jihadist, how old we are, where we live...next it will be how much we pay on taxes, what we are wearing while posting...The sort of questions that a soiled-diaper wearing buffoon masquerading as a serious thinker must ask to be relevant...
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These questions may matter in Sesamestan, Zachy, not here. Please, try to get back on track. You have had some good moments here, but certainly not lately -- least of all on Islam and religiously inspired violence.
If it makes you feel better, I will refer to you as Dr. Zach going forward. But only if you change your diaper!
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Greg said,
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"Since you [Jim] mentioned my name, I will chime in here. Sam Harris' fear appears to be rooted in what believes is Islam's superior charasmatic quality. I took this to mean that the religion has the ability to compromise the executive function of the human brain perhaps more effectively than Christianity or Judaism. This would suggest that if the religion had some sort of malevolent quality, then adherents could be compromised and incited to terrorism because of it."
You sometimes actually make a lot of sense. But suppose that instead of saying "This would suggest that if the religion had some sort of malevolent quality, then adherents could be compromised and incited to terrorism because of it," you replaced just a few words and more or less said, "This would suggest that if the INDIVIDUAL had some sort of [preexisting] ABNORMALITY [or proclivity], then HE could be compromised and incited to terrorism because of THE RELIGION." I think you can agree that that is entirely possible. Moreover, because Harris' expertise is in neuroscience, might it not even be more likely that he actually had something in mind along those lines, although of course articulated better?
You go on to say,
"However, just being a fervent believer does not seem to be the key ingredient for becoming a terrorist. Zach's sources point out convincingly that being young, disillusioned, disenfranchised , and angry play much bigger roles in predicting terrorist of today."
Granted "that being young, disillusioned, disenfranchised , and angry play much bigger roles in predicting terrorist of today," but given those traits, might it be possible that one religion, or set of behavioral rules, even just a set of purely secular rules, does a better job than another in constraining the undesirable behavior?
You guys keep assuming that for something to happen there has to be a positive causal force acting on someone or something, yet when you look at a purely physical system all you need to have is a differential. Thus, for instance, you can have a lot of pressure pushing water through a pipe, or a large vacuum pulling it. Then regardless of which of the two you have, what is important is the quality of the valve on the pipe helping to regulate the flow of water. Islam as a set of behavioral rules, or valve, can do this better or worse than other sets of rules, whether those of Christianity or the criminal code of a country.
Sometimes it helps to drop the ideological considerations, or blinders, and try to look solely at, and understand, what happens in actual practice.
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All fair points, and worth a conversation. As to your last sentence, I have ideas, but I've also had my say many times over here in the past few days; as such, I think you could be the one to take point. How do we decide which set of rules is really doing the best job, especially since rule sets often exist side-by-side, even in conflict with one another?
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I already tried to have that conversation multiple times over very many days but you kept changing the subject into areas that you had read something about and therefore felt more comfortable with. Have fun with those.
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I've made the point I wanted to make, emphasizing analytic methodology, not content, and you guys can accept it or not, take off the blinders or not. Oddly what you atheists pride yourselves at doing better than others is methodology (reasoning), yet when offered something in that area that may disprove your misconceptions you run from it.
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"How do we decide which set of rules is really doing the best job, especially since rule sets often exist side-by-side, even in conflict with one another?"
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You've already concluded that Islam is better than Christianity. Tell us how, notice I said how, not why, you arrived at that conclusion. You, after all, have argued that as an atheist you do a better job reasoning than non-atheists. Tell us how that works in this case.
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Xavier, excellent insight. I am tired of beating a dead horse. Ideology blinds and binds. The other side can't let go of their biases. Ergo, though it would help them "drop the ideological considerations," they won't. Zach reminds me of the chained prisoners in Plato's Allegory of the Cave...Reality is in their ideological cave. Making the ascent to the outside where there is light is something their enslaved herd are unwilling to do. They have only one truth: whatever their benighted and atrophied minds tell them it should be, ad hoc.
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