In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,
"Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory" [Quran 22:39]
"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan."[Quran 4:76]
Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?' These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's reward, seeking success and support from Him.
The very first paragraphs of Bin Laden's letter. Yup, no religious motivations here. Bin Laden just flat-out said they were fighting based on Islamic Law, and made a subtle dig at American writers saying they aren't.
Bin Laden's letter is actually a perfect example of what we've all been talking about. He cites many reasons for attacking America. Some of which are issues of geopolitics, others are issues of religion. He repeatedly claims it as his goal to see the Shariah implemented in law - for example...
(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.
(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.
Even the big topic of who gets to control Palestine is religiously motivated and Bin Laden brings up issues of theological justification for who should get to keep the holy land.
I've been responding to particular arguments that I feel are fallacious, so whether or not a specific attack had religious motivations isn't that relevant to my own points, but I find it amazing the extent to which some people will cover their eyes and ears in the name of tolerance.
Leftist guilt mongering? Please explan. I will get through the rest of the arguments later when I can get time and access to a computer, which will likely be this weekend or next.
Leftist guilt mongering? Please explan. I will get through the rest of the arguments later when I can get time and access to a computer, which will likely be this weekend or next.
Guilt-mongering, in this case, takes the form of ignoring every fact about the situation except for a particular subset that allows one to place blame on oneself or his civilization for some military or political misadventure. It is often accompanied by the removal of moral and cognitive agency from the people on the other side of the equation, portraying them as if they were mindless insects like bees, who respond savagely to someone poking their nest out of pure instinct rather than any actual conscious process -- making the nest-poker, rather than the bees, responsible for any stings that result.
The reality is that people are moral and cognitive agents moved to action by beliefs. The beliefs that motivated bin Laden's actions, as outlined in his own words, are deeply and indisputably theological. The presence of infidels in a particular geographical location is going to be much less of a problem for you if you don't believe in such things as infidels and you don't believe a particular piece of land is holy. The fact that a particular country doesn't govern itself according to Sharia law is not going to turn you into a mad bomber if you happen to disagree that Sharia law is divinely endorsed. And you'll probably hate the Jews a lot less when you realize that they aren't, in fact, attempting to attain financial control of the entire world through systemic usury perpetrated by transnational banking cartels, which of course they control.
This is the bat-nuts crazy stuff that bin Laden believed, and like all human beings, he is a moral and cognitive agent spurred to action by his beliefs. Laying his actions at the feet of Western civilization rather than his own deranged mind is nothing but an act of pathological self-loathing and guilt-mongering.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
"Guilt-Mongering" probably implies more than you mean and describe above, because it seems to imply a specific agenda that may not even be sincere - which I don't think exists. The actual description you give to this willful-blindness-in-the-name-of-tolerance though, that seems dead-on. Chillingly so.
There is, for lack of a better way to say it, a seeming inability for western liberals, as a group, to believe that groups of people really do believe the literal understanding of whats in their holy books.
I'm a western liberal, and I have to agree. It's weird. The ideal of religious tolerance means there's a knee-jerk reaction to anyone attacking a specific religion, which is understandable and probably a good thing on a base level. We should be skeptical of anyone making statements about schools of thought or groups. Demonization of a group or religion, even anything that looks remotely like it might turn into Demonization, should be treated like rhetorical dynamite.
However, there's a time when skepticism turns into straight-out denial.
Crashing00, I don't have a lot of time to respond, but as I read no, I still have to disagree with you. There is a difference between using religion to justify one's action and having a different reason to motivate you to do something.
You should note from my posting history how I feel about religion. The point isn't to deny that religion is bad in many ways, but rather to look at things in context. In that letter Bin Laden states his reasons for his motivation to attack us is because he perceives an injustice:
Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
I don't have time to continue writing out a big long post analyzing every aspect of his letter, but yes - he is a psychopath and yes his views are painted by his religion, but his religion is not what motivated him to terrorism. It is the perceived injustice that motivated him to action, in this case the west attacking Islam/Muslims.
I will get to these arguments in more detail later.
Crashing00, I don't have a lot of time to respond, but as I read no, I still have to disagree with you. There is a difference between using religion to justify one's action and having a different reason to motivate you to do something.
You should note from my posting history how I feel about religion. The point isn't to deny that religion is bad in many ways, but rather to look at things in context. In that letter Bin Laden states his reasons for his motivation to attack us is because he perceives an injustice:
I don't have time to continue writing out a big long post analyzing every aspect of his letter, but yes - he is a psychopath and yes his views are painted by his religion, but his religion is not what motivated him to terrorism. It is the perceived injustice that motivated him to action, in this case the west attacking Islam/Muslims.
I will get to these arguments in more detail later.
Okay, seriously? Again with the quote-mining? Do you really feel that single sentence conveys the full picture about the motivations of the person writing this letter? I get that you don't have a lot of time, but if it were up to me, I'd rather you wait until you can actually treat the subject with some degree of seriousness.
That being said, your propensity to narrow the picture to this single sentence could, in fact, be explained rather nicely by your ascription to the "bee theory" of human behavior with respect to Al Qaeda. Because what you've done here is played up the supposed provocation, but completely left out all of the intervening cognitive steps between the perception of provocation and the resulting action. It is as if you're saying that blowing up a building full of innocent people is just the inevitable result of someone being aggrieved.
But that's not the case. Bin Laden did feel himself to be the victim of something, but for a human being with cognitive and moral agency, there are a million steps between being aggrieved and blowing up a building. It could have gone any number of different ways. Bin Laden could have been a good Christian and turned the other cheek. He could have been a practitioner of satyagraha and resisted nonviolently. He could have been a Jain, a strict practitioner of ahimsa. He could have practiced a different variety of Islam, say Sufism, that believes that the nonviolent verses of the Koran take precedence over the violent ones that he cites immediately prior to your quote mine. He could have been a pragmatist, said "to hell with it," and taken his billion dollar inheritance off to some island somewhere where he could sip drinks on a beach and bang German models all day.
But he did none of those things, because he was none of those things. He was a radical islamist Jihadist antisemite, and that's what motivated his actions. You don't have to take my word for it; all you have to do is actually read... well, pretty much any portion of the letter other than what you quoted.
Private Mod Note
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Crashing, I said up there that I do not have time to go through each part of his letter. If you want feel free to pick out the aspects of his letter you find that support your claims and I will.address them. As I already told you, a rebuttal is coming but it will likely take me a couple hours to write it and I don't have time to sit down and write it. I have personal things in my life that take priority, like my son who is very sick right now.
Hope your son feels better. Gotta agree with Crashing though, these kinds of posts aren't helping your credibility at all. It just makes you look like you're doing a strange mirror of what you've been accusing others of arguing - that you're picking a subset of causes-of-terrorism that you feel comfortable with and blatantly pushing everything else aside.
Perhaps I am not communicating myself well, so I think I need time to write it. Thanks you for your thoughts on my son. He has ear infections that are messing with him terribly right now and might need tubes in his ears to stop him from the constant ear infections. Its even more challenging because he won't take his medication. Anyway sorry for deviating from the topic.
Alright, not really a fan of double posting and normally wouldn’t, but I feel like this needs to have a new post so I’m going to break my rule and double post.
Anyway, sorry for the antagonizing posts there Stairc, sometimes when I debate things emotions tend to get the better of me and I start acting an ass and don’t consider that perhaps it’s me who is not being clear. So I’ll try my best to make myself as clear as I can possibly be and try harder to refrain from being antagonistic in the future.
Not really sure where to start, I have a lot of things to go over and this will probably be a pretty long post. Also I probably won’t be able to make another long post like this for a little while (it took me about five hours to write this post!) as I will be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, enough rambling, it’s time to get down to business. Where to start though? How about some of these more recent posts? Seems as good a place as any.
Quote from Stairc »
these kinds of posts aren't helping your credibility at all.
Perhaps they don’t help my case that much. That being said, I’m not an expert by any means and I don’t have any credibility to speak of in the first place, so I suppose I should thank you for giving me any credibility at all (so thanks for that). In fact, you don’t have to listen to a single thing I say at all. Just the same though, unless someone posting here would like to cite themselves as an expert and that is somehow relevant to what we’re discussing, then I don’t think anyone has any credibility.
That being said, it wouldn’t matter even if I had all the credibility in the world or if anyone had all the credibility in the world and start posting in this thread and took whatever side they felt was correct. As you said already, as I’ve said in the past, and as Matt Dillahunty is fond of saying, it’s:
Quote from Stairc »
Because an argument stands or falls on its own merits, regardless of who makes it.
Moving right along...
Quote from Stairc »
It just makes you look like you're doing a strange mirror of what you've been accusing others of arguing - that you're picking a subset of causes-of-terrorism that you feel comfortable with and blatantly pushing everything else aside.
Indeed and that isn’t surprising at all. There’s things like cognitive dissonance and observation bias that make it really hard to see the opposing side’s view. It is likely that no matter what any of us have to say, we will not convince the other side of our opposing view.
That’s perfect fine. People’s beliefs aren’t easy to change. I can’t expect you to suddenly just start or to make yourself believe that 1+1=5. As I said before, there was a time not too long ago when I would be right here standing at your side agreeing with Sam Harris, you, Crashing00, and anyone else that has taken your position.
My change in opinion didn’t happen overnight, it happened gradually. But let’s explore further about what I’m referring to here…
Quote from Crashing00 »
filtering it through a lens of Leftist guilt-mongering.
This quote is out of context, apologies. I’m not going to make you say something you’re not actually saying though, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As we see above, I asked Crashing to explain the term, which he defines thusly:
Quote from Crashing00 »
Guilt-mongering, in this case, takes the form of ignoring every fact about the situation except for a particular subset that allows one to place blame on oneself or his civilization for some military or political misadventure. It is often accompanied by the removal of moral and cognitive agency from the people on the other side of the equation, portraying them as if they were mindless insects like bees, who respond savagely to someone poking their nest out of pure instinct rather than any actual conscious process -- making the nest-poker, rather than the bees, responsible for any stings that result.
I find the analytical assumption you’re making about the lens I’m viewing this situation in quite interesting. I think it is inaccurate, but interesting and is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance and perhaps observation bias.
Both of those things are tough not to get caught up in. It’s certainly possible that those things are hindering my view point.
However, it’s also quite possible that those things are hindering yours.
Perhaps you are looking at this same situation through the lens of Islamophobic fear-mongering. In this case ignoring every other fact about the situation except for a particular subset (religion) that allows one to place blame on that subset (religious belief) instead of considering the possibility that a person can’t be reduced down to only their religious beliefs and that life experiences, upbringing, peer pressure, etc. also play a part into how a person’s beliefs are shaped.
It is often accompanied by the removal of cognitive and lacking the understanding of the people on the other side of the equation, portraying them as though they are drooling mindless zealots who only go to mosques to pray seven times a day, take their holy scripture literally, and are the only true believers of said religion.
But more importantly, perhaps we shouldn’t make assumptions about what lens the other side is looking through because cognitive dissonance and observation biases play a huge role in how we view the world and hinder our ability to think critically. Perhaps, it is probably something we should consider before we make those assumptions about that lens, because often times they are inaccurate and provoke antagonistic responses that are more often than not, unproductive.
Quote from Crashing00 »
The reality is that people are moral and cognitive agents moved to action by beliefs. The beliefs that motivated bin Laden's actions, as outlined in his own words, are deeply and indisputably theological.
It is not surprising that a deeply religious person’s view of the world are colored by their religion. Just as I am sure it isn’t surprising that someone’s atheism colors their world view. However, just because someone’s view is colored by religion, does not mean that their religion is the reason they are who they are or that it is the only thing that motivates their actions or that it is the thing that motivates them in a particular action.
People and their thoughts are shaped by many things, not just religion. We can’t just look at the fact that a person is religious and views the world through the lens of their religion as the only thing that shapes their world view. Human thought is much more complex than that.
We have to look at what that person is trying to say and not at the fact that they are using religious language to say it.
What do I mean?
Well first, it’s important that I define what exactly a motivator is. That’s something I didn’t do, but something is very important in trying to explain what I’m talking about.
Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
Now then, now that I have defined what I think 'motivator' means (if you disagree with this definition, please feel free to correct it and come up with a definition to describe what you mean when you use this word - perhaps we just misunderstand each other), I am free to move on and so I will:
Well I don’t think I have to go through every sentence of Bin Laden’s letter to make my point, so let’s start with the ‘quote mining’ that Stairc has done with Bin Laden’s letter:
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,
"Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory" [Quran 22:39]
"Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan."[Quran 4:76]
Certainly, this is obvious that the person that wrote this has a religious view of the world, but as I said above – we can’t only look at that aspect, we have to look at what they are saying and not how they are saying it.
Does this paragraph list a motivator here?
It certainly doesn’t look like that to me, it looks like a call to arms while giving a justification for it. It looks like he is acknowledging that going to war is generally viewed as morally wrong, but that in this case – God is giving them permission and since God is the moral giver and that their cause is just, they have God’s permission to engage in an otherwise morally wrong thing. God, is on their side and opposes the other side.
Again, it is not surprising that a person who is deeply religious has their view of the world colored by their religion, but we have to pay attention to what they are saying and not how it is said.
Let’s look at the next part of the letter:
Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?' These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth - as an explanation and warning - hoping for Allah's reward, seeking success and support from Him.
What is Bin Laden saying here? Is this a motivator?
No, it certainly doesn’t look that way either. It looks like he is saying that our media was/is/are writing things about them and that those things that are being said are generating a response from the American people, some of which were truthful and some of which were not.
He wants to take the opportunity to talk about what their motivations actually are, but note that he does not list what any of his motivations actually are here. This is an indication that he is about to list what the motivators are, but not what the motivators themselves are.
Once again, it is not surprising that a person who is deeply religious has their view of the world colored by their religion, but we have to pay attention to what they are saying and not how it is said.
He then goes on to list many things that in his view are hypocrisy, attacks on his people, supporting enemies that have historically attacked and continue to attack him and his people, etc.
These are things that he views as an injustice on him and his people, these are the motivators. We’ll get back to this though in a second.
Quote from Crashing00 »
The presence of infidels in a particular geographical location is going to be much less of a problem for you if you don't believe in such things as infidels and you don't believe a particular piece of land is holy.
When seeking to understand these people, what we can’t do is take this approach. You’ve over simplified and mischaracterized what Bin-Laden said in his letter, so let’s look at what he said in regards to the American presence in the Middle East:
(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.
(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.
That isn’t as simple as how you are characterizing his view.
These are motivators and these are what he views as injustices. He is not just some true believer that is upset that infidels are sitting in his holy land. He lists his reasons right here. Stealing wealth and oil, using military threats, corrupting his lands, protecting people he views as his enemy.
By mischaracterizing his view and simplifying it as you are doing here, you are being intellectually dishonest. It’s wrong, you’re wrong, stop doing that.
Is this guilt-mongering on my part? I don’t think so. Despite how it may come off, I’m seeking to understand his view and people like him in order to try to explain the reason(s) why people join terrorist organizations with the intention of harming other people.
I am not here to make moral judgments on American foreign policy, I’m here to try and understand the people we are talking about and not make assumptions about what they think. Trying to understand their view and how they came to have that view might coincidentally bring American foreign policy under the microscope, but this is because we are seeking to understand their view point and not understand them from our view point, which is tainted with our own cognitive dissonance and personal biases.
More importantly it doesn’t mean you can just write it off as nothing more than guilt-mongering and simply ignore it as such because it’s an important element when trying to understand how they view the world. It helps us to understand their motivations and explain why these people are blowing themselves up, flying planes into buildings, and joining terrorist organizations.
Quote from Crashing00 »
The fact that a particular country doesn't govern itself according to Sharia law is not going to turn you into a mad bomber if you happen to disagree that Sharia law is divinely endorsed.
In fact, even if one did agree with Sharia law and think it is divinely endorsed that still isn’t going to magically turn you into a mad bomber. There are people who do agree with Sharia law, think that their government should follow it, take the Koran literally, etc. but don’t join terrorist organizations and are non-violent.
You’ve seen them before on youtube in convenient little clips with people like Dawkins, they also exist here in the United States and Muslims aren’t the only people who think their holy laws should be followed and don’t resort to violence (see dominionism).
Quote from Crashing00 »
And you'll probably hate the Jews a lot less when you realize that they aren't, in fact, attempting to attain financial control of the entire world through systemic usury perpetrated by transnational banking cartels, which of course they control.
Well yeah, no one said that a person’s world view has to be reasonable. It can be completely unreasonable. But whether or not it’s reasonable or not reasonable is a different debate and not important in trying to explain these people and how they view the world.
For the record, no I don’t think their world view or their actions is/are reasonable.
Quote from Crashing00 »
This is the bat-nuts crazy stuff that bin Laden believed, and like all human beings, he is a moral and cognitive agent spurred to action by his beliefs. Laying his actions at the feet of Western civilization rather than his own deranged mind is nothing but an act of pathological self-loathing and guilt-mongering.
Bat-nuts crazy, certainly. Not crazy in any clinical sense, but certainly in the way you are using the term. Unless you do mean he is clinically crazy, in which case I’d have to disagree with you.
Certainly, he is a moral and cognitive agent spurred to action by his beliefs, but it’s important that we understand his beliefs from his point of view and that we don't narrow his beliefs down to only to his religious views.
Is he Deranged, in the dictionary sense of the word? No, he’s not. He knew what he was doing, thinks he is doing the morally just thing, and views us as the ones who are immoral, himself as moral, and his letter reflects exactly that.
He is not deranged, self-loathing, or guilt-mongering. Nothing indicates that these things are true. This is an assumption on your part.
I don’t think I’m going to address the rest of your posts because I’m pretty sure I’ve addressed your arguments thoroughly enough. For now.
If there are aspects of his letter you’d like me to address, feel free to 'quote mine' it and I’ll address it. If you think there’s an argument I’ve missed, let me know and I’ll address it. If you think I’ve misunderstood you somewhere let me know and I’ll try my best to understand you.
Now then moving backwards to explain why I don’t agree with Sam Harris, Crashing00, Stairc, etc.
The argument:
Quote from bitterroot »
Obviously those views are not shared by most Muslims, but their motivation was their interpretation of their religion.
Stairc agrees:
Quote from Stairc »
Bitterroot understood it just fine.
Quote from crashing00 »
He was a radical islamist Jihadist antisemite, and that's what motivated his actions.
“Their” is referencing people that join ISIS, al-qaeda, etc. with the intention of hurting other people.
Now, despite my colorful and over exaggerated description of a ‘drooling mindless zealot’ – what I’m talking about is a zealot. So I’m going to define what I meant and what I mean:
Zealot - That is, a person that is fanatical about their beliefs, one whose beliefs are uncompromising, and a true believer.
Why don’t I agree with this argument?
As I’ve said earlier, you can’t characterize people this way. People are more than their religious beliefs, many things help to form a person’s thought processes and how they view the world. Religion is one of those things, but it isn’t the only thing. Life experiences for example, also have an impact on these things as well as many other things.
It is important that we acknowledge this and not ignore it. This explanation fails for several reasons:
1) It does not adequately explain the why the people we are talking about join these organizations with the intention of hurting people.
There are in fact, zealots who are every bit as fanatical, true believing, take a literal view of the Koran, think Sharia law is divine and that governments should follow it, etc. who don’t join these organizations or resort to violence at all. This explain therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
2) There are in fact, people who are not Muslims - who come to sympathize with the people we are talking about, convert to Islam and join these terrorist organizations with the intention of hurting people and this explanation does not explain these people.
3) It Mischaracterizes the people we are seeking to understand and is therefore, intellectually dishonest.
As we can see from Bin-Laden’s letter he is certainly much more than his religious beliefs. Certainly, those religious beliefs color his view of the world. But we can’t let the language he uses in describing his world view distract us from what he is saying.
Not once does he ever reason that his motivation comes from his interpretation of Islam, that is to say, he never reasons that according to God or the Koran, we have to declare war on people or kill them or anything like that. That is far too simplistic of a way to describe his what his motivations are in that letter and it’s inaccurate.
I certainly didn’t come to this conclusion out of the blue, it took me a while to come to it and happened gradually. I’ve done research on it, I’ve read some of these studies, I've debated this already. If you haven’t read them, I encourage you to do so. I find that the explanations that they give, offer a better understanding of the people we are talking about and how they view the world.
Some of the things listed as motivators:
- That there is a perceived injustice and that violence is the only way to achieve change.
- Poor economic situations, that is, by joining these groups they have a chance to earn a living, eat food, drink potable water, place to live, etc. where they otherwise would not have any of these things.
- A sense of belonging and/or a sense of loneliness, that is by joining these groups they feel they belong.
The next argument:
Quote from Stairc »
He's referring to the commands in the religious text in question. When someone actively doesn't do what their religion says is god's will, how can you object to the characterization that they aren't taking the religion very seriously? I'm glad they don't, but this seems like an extremely tiny nitpick.
Quote from Stairc »
It wouldn't be incongruous for someone to state "Based on definition X, which I hold to be reasonable, people that aren't doing X aren't taking their religion seriously" and to simultaneously state "Many people not doing X still think of themselves as taking their religion seriously".
The argument then becomes as to what should be the appropriate definition for "taking your religion seriously". The definition I'm referring to is treating the holy text that is claimed to be the divine word of god as if it actually is the divine word of god (charitably assuming that if people believe the god they worship and claim to serve is telling them to do something, they actually would do it). If you think a different definition is more appropriate, that's fine, but for this discussion this is the definition Sam seemed to be using. Arguing the accuracy of the definition is a challenge to his vocabulary, not his point.
The view that Sam Harris explains as basically, you have this group of Muslims and that group, etc. But this group takes their religious views more seriously than this other group because this group takes a literal view of their holy books, etc.
I don’t agree with this argument for these reasons:
1) There is no reason to suspect that just because a Muslim who puts his life on the line to protect Christians and/or agrees with gay rights and/or doesn’t take a literal view of the Koran is any less serious about Islam than a Muslim who goes out of their way to kill Christians and/or disagrees with gay rights, and/or takes a literal view of the Koran.
That is, they are not less of a believer(s).
The human mind is a complex thing and certainly isn’t always rational. Religious believers are capable of cherry picking beliefs, ignoring contradictions and/or violent texts in favor of ones that do agree with their own world view. This concept works every which way, both for the Muslims religious people who choose to use violence to advance their agendas and the ones who don’t. Both for the Muslims religious people that don’t take a literal view of the Koran their holy scriptures and those who do.
This is a concept that I’m very reasonably sure that you (Sam Harris, Stairc, Crashing00, and anyone else that agrees with them) understands. These people are not less of a believer(s). They believe just as sincerely as the people you describe as fanatical. To mischaracterize them as less of a believer, is intellectually dishonest and fails to understand the people you are talking about.
It’s wrong, you’re wrong, stop doing that.
Finally, we come back full circle to these things called Cognitive Dissonance and Observation Bias. I’m not above these things, you aren’t above these things, and no one is above these things.
Perhaps these things are obstructing me from understanding your point of view and perhaps my own observation biases are preventing me from coming over to your side. I have no real way of knowing that for sure. I can only do the best I can with the mind I have. I could indeed be wrong and I have absolutely no credibility to speak of.
However, I don’t believe I am wrong and I don’t buy your arguments or the arguments that Sam Harris is peddling.
Sam Harris can line his walls with degrees that says he’s an expert at everything, but he’s as guilty as having these qualities about himself as I am, as you are, as we all are. Indeed, there was a time when I would have agreed with him and stood side by side with you in this thread shouting from the virtual roof tops about how evil religion is and how it’s responsible for 9/11, people blowing themselves up, etc.
Don’t take my word for that, go ahead and search my posting history. I have hundreds of posts that indicate and show me doing this.
Sam Harris even has an added bonus - he lines his pockets by writing and then selling these books with these types of arguments in them. He’s invited on talk shows to share his views on a national platform. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that his financial investment in his world view taken together with the concepts of cognitive dissonance and observation bias probably paint his world view(s) and that we should probably question it and not take his word these things.
Arguments stand and fall on their own merits and it doesn’t matter who said them.
I’m not saying that religion isn’t responsible for some vile things and I’m not saying that Bin-Laden isn’t a vile human being with anti-Semitic views or that his views are reasonable.
He was indeed a radical islamist Jihadist anti-Semite, but that isn't all he was. It’s important to understand what his world view was from his point of view and not our point of view so that we can properly explain these phenomena, even if that takes us to other uncomfortable discussions. We have to look at these things in context and not just point the finger at religion because it’s convenient.
That’s it. That’s all I have to say. I know it’s a lot to read and I apologize for that, but this is a complex topic and isn't easily explained with a quote mine here and there along with a few paragraphs. Crashing was certainly right to criticize me for that, but that doesn't make what I said any less reasonable or make what I said wrong. I will acknowledge though, that I certainly wasn't giving this topic the proper attention and justice it deserves.
I don’t expect that those who disagree with me will change their minds with this one post, but hopefully I’ve explained myself as clearly as possible.
Perhaps I sound irrational to you, but you should note that you sound just as irrational to me. I could probably repeat the a lot same reasoning you gave for not accepting my reasons right back at you verbatim (in fact I did a few times already...) and in my own cognitive dissonance and observational biases, it would and does make complete sense, while your point of view and arguments don't make any sense at all. Maybe I am plugging my ears and sticking my head in the sand. Perhaps it's you and not me who is guilty of that. I don't have any real way of knowing, I can only make the best arguments I can to explain my reasoning and hope that it stands up to scrutiny.
Damn cognitive dissonance and observation biases, getting in the way of it all, grrrrr!
Thanks for the apology. I admit, I have not read your entire post yet. Thus, I'm treading on dynamite here, but I think I'm seeing some major misconceptions I'd like to address. But first, a minor one.'
Quote from »
Stairc agrees
No, Stairc did not say that. Stairc was referring solely to Bitterroot's explanation of what Stairc meant by your equivocating claims that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism with the other thing... And not, as you were currently crying out, that Stairc had claimed you'd endorsed the view that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism.
Now for the major clarifications.
My Beliefs
My own beliefs on this matter are as follows.
1) Deeply held beliefs can motivate people to do things, whether wonderful or terrible.
2) Many religious beliefs are deeply held.
C: Therefore, Religious beliefs can motivate people to do things, whether wonderful or terrible.
I don't think anyone can disagree with the above statements or conclusion rationally.
The Sam Harris Quote
From what you've said in this post, and now skimming your previous posts about it again, your beef with Sam Harris seems to be one big equivocation error. You're equating "seriously" with, "sincerely". I know, because you said it.
Quote from FoxBlade »
These people are not less of a believer(s). They believe just as sincerely as the people you describe as fanatical. To mischaracterize them as less of a believer, is intellectually dishonest and fails to understand the people you are talking about.
Thus, by swapping out "seriously" for "sincerely" - you consider the statement somehow dismissive of how deeply held the beliefs of non-crazy people are. But that isn't what Harris or I mean. It's a throwaway quote on live TV based solely on how strictly people follow the holy religious documents in question. You've read way too much into it.
The thing is, sincerity is inarguable. A person is either sincere or he isn't, because sincerity is about what a person believes. What it means to take something "seriously" is arguable. A parent might think his kid isn't taking the SAT seriously because the kid is studying only 2 hours a night, when he should be studying 3 (according to the parent). The kid might think he's taking the SAT seriously because he's studying 2 hours - which to him seems extreme. You can argue about this. However, both sides can be sincere in their beliefs.
Many deeply religious Christians have never read the bible. They still feel their beliefs are deep and sincerely believe them. They also claim the bible to be the word of god. However, they haven't made time to read the book. You could totally call them out for not taking it seriously, that's a point that can be argued. It doesn't mean their beliefs are insincere.
No One is Saying Only Religion is Responsible for Terrorism
Many of your refutations seem to take the form of "Hey, religion doesn't always lead to terrorism and you can have terrorism without religion". No one is denying this. You can stop repeating it.
For example, you gain nothing by listing Osama’s secular reasons for his actions. You don’t have to demonstrate Osama has secular reasons for his actions when no one is saying that he doesn’t. What you should be doing is quoting the religious reasons he also cites and explaining why he doesn’t really mean them. Here, let’s go through a good chunk of the letter.
Some American writers have published articles under the title 'On what basis are we fighting?' These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not.
Osama just flat-out said that the explanations that adhere to truth were based on Islamic Law. Here are some more.
It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.
When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.
This is one of his sub-points to his very first reason of “you attacked us in Palestine”. The first sub-point is mostly secular, talking about military occupation. This point is obviously religious. It talks about the religious claims to the plot of land and talks about Jerusalem “returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets”.
I notice you used points D and E here, so let’s talk about C. It’s actually a great example, because it’s a mix of religious and secular reasons.
(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;
Okay Osama, let’s hear it – what’s your number one beef with these governments? What’s the most horrible thing they’ve done to you, that makes you want to attack us the most?
(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.
Wow… Weird. That sounds almost like a religious motivation, wanting to establish Islamic Shariah. But please, continue.
(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.
(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price.
(iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people.
Secular reasons, or is that just “secular coloring”? Nah, these are obviously motivations because they’re listed as such, so I’ll give them due credit.
But is it really a strong motivation? Would you say it’s more a preference or something closer to an obligation you’re trying to achieve?
(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step…
Okay, that answers that question. Now can you reiterate your biggest reason for this obligation?
…to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.
There we go! Right there, a religious motivation and a secular one living together in harmony in a single sentence. Then there’s another sentence connecting them back to us again and the circle is complete. But could we get the man to say point-blank that his aggression was commanded by religion? Surely that’s too much to ask. It would be nice to have that, sure, since it would settle the question right away, but that’s not realistic to hope for.
These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression
Well… Well then.
But anyway, reasons for attacks aside, let’s see what Osama actively says he wants from us. That’s going to be very revealing, surely.
(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
Yes, go on. Obviously the first thing is going to be “stop the oppression” or, “get out of our land” or something, but as long as something vaguely religious is somewhere on that list… Well, let’s take a look.
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.
Sweet, I was righ… Wait… The second thing? Well what was the first thing then?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all...
Um… My bad?
Well, let’s go back to that second reason. Stop the oppression, immorality and debauchery! Surely he’s talking about the situation in Palestine and… Wait…
(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.
Okay, weird point to lead with for a guy primarily focused on getting us to stop killing his people, but there must be more to follow.
(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:
Here we go! Off to the races now, let’s list off you number 1 point for why we’re the worst nation. Surely it’s all that killing of you we do and so on.
(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator….
Um… Osama… You do know that you’re NOT motivated by religious motivations, right?
(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions.
Uh… I don’t know if you heard me. You aren’t motivated by religious beliefs here. Surely someone’s told you before this.
Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?
Right, the president having an affair with a secretary is way worse than all the crimes we’ve inflicted on Palestine – I understand – but Osama, let’s get back on track. You’re a freedom fighter, please, stay on script. Can we get to the atrocities you’re actually fighting against?
(xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?
Wait, it took us till point ELEVEN to get here? And the rest was about gambling and putting women in bikinis on billboards?
And wait, this is subsection 9 of subsection B of section 1! When are you going to tell us to get out of your lands?
(5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins.
Section 5?! Seriously?! To be fair, there are no subsections after point 2. But in either case, the fifth demand you have is for us to leave. Number five. Five. At least 4 told us to stop supporting Israel and so on but Osama, you aren’t listening. Your acts of terrorism are not religiously motivated. They’re just colored and…
Forget it, I give up, I can’t work with this guy. Besides, I’ve proved my point like nine times over. Osama has clearly stated religious motivations, not just religious language coloring the motivations of a freedom fighter. He also has clearly said that Clinton’s affair is worse than all the things we’ve ever done, or ever could do, to the Middle East.
Done and done. Osama had motivations of both a religious nature and a secular nature. Case closed.
Does That Clarify Things?
I didn't address certain aspects of your post, because I think a lot of it is based on foundations of misconception, miscommunication or some other thing that has a 'mis' in it. I'm hoping to clarify these things first, and see if it unknots the confusion I believe has spider-webbed through the conversation.
Special Extended Edition
I'm trying to attack the root misconceptions, but this point you made was such a doozy that it needed its own response.
1) It does not adequately explain the why the people we are talking about join these organizations with the intention of hurting people.
There are in fact, zealots who are every bit as fanatical, true believing, take a literal view of the Koran, think Sharia law is divine and that governments should follow it, etc. who don’t join these organizations or resort to violence at all. This explain therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
There are in fact, people suffering every bit as much from these secular motivations you've listed and are just as angry about it and think civilians should be attacked in revenge and so on... Who don't join these organizations or resort to violence at all. The explanation of secular causes therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
Heck, I can disprove *every* cause of terrorism using this argument.
No, Stairc did not say that. Stairc was referring solely to Bitterroot's explanation of what Stairc meant by your equivocating claims that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism with the other thing... And not, as you were currently crying out, that Stairc had claimed you'd endorsed the view that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism.
I know what it is referring to, the problem isn't the point that you are making, it's the premise that you are using to make it.
You can't on one hand say you aren't saying that while simultaneously use it as your premise to dismiss an argument. If that premise is wrong, you aren't saying that, and you don't endorse that premise, where does that leave your argument?
Quote from Stairc »
From what you've said in this post, and now skimming your previous posts about it again, your beef with Sam Harris seems to be one big equivocation error. You're equating "seriously" with, "sincerely". I know, because you said it.
Thus, by swapping out "seriously" for "sincerely" - you consider the statement somehow dismissive of how deeply held the beliefs of non-crazy people are. But that isn't what Harris or I mean. It's a throwaway quote on live TV based solely on how strictly people follow the holy religious documents in question. You've read way too much into it.
This is not equivocation. You can swap it out if you like and it's an argument that still works and one that I still agree with.
That is because these people don't take it less seriously just because they don't take a literal interpretation of the bible, etc.
There are every bit as serious about Islam. I would bet my life that Highroller doesn't take everything in the bible literally, but takes his Christianity every bit as serious as the most dogmatic fanatical christian. The same is true for followers of Islam. You can't categorize religious believers this way.
As I said above:
Quote from FoxBlade »
The human mind is a complex thing and certainly isn’t always rational. Religious believers are capable of cherry picking beliefs, ignoring contradictions and/or violent texts in favor of ones that do agree with their own world view. This concept works every which way, both for the Muslims religious people who choose to use violence to advance their agendas and the ones who don’t. Both for the Muslims religious people that don’t take a literal view of the Koran their holy scriptures and those who do.
This is a concept that I’m very reasonably sure that you (Sam Harris, Stairc, Crashing00, and anyone else that agrees with them) understands. These people are not less of a believer(s). They believe just as sincerely as the people you describe as fanatical. To mischaracterize them as less of a believer, is intellectually dishonest and fails to understand the people you are talking about.
Moving on...
Quote from Stairc »
Osama just flat-out said that the explanations that adhere to truth were based on Islamic Law. Here are some more.
Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
So what? We are concerned with what the motivators are and this is not one of them. Pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
Quote from Stairc »
It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.
When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.
This is one of his sub-points to his very first reason of “you attacked us in Palestine”. The first sub-point is mostly secular, talking about military occupation. This point is obviously religious. It talks about the religious claims to the plot of land and talks about Jerusalem “returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets”.
I notice you used points D and E here, so let’s talk about C. It’s actually a great example, because it’s a mix of religious and secular reasons.
This is one of his sub-points to his very first reason of “you attacked us in Palestine”. The first sub-point is mostly secular, talking about military occupation. This point is obviously religious. It talks about the religious claims to the plot of land and talks about Jerusalem “returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets”.
I notice you used points D and E here, so let’s talk about C. It’s actually a great example, because it’s a mix of religious and secular reasons.
Okay, let's talk about that.
Once again pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
It looks to me like he is explaining his point of view on American foreign policy, why he thinks is hypocritical, and tying in his historical view about why the Jewish view is wrong. What does the following and last paragraph say?
(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.
That is the motivator. This is what drives him to do the action in question. He pointed out what he views as American hypocrisy and then went on to explain that his motivation are the dead and that he is avenging those deaths for the widows and orphans.
Quote from Stairc »
Okay, that answers that question. Now can you reiterate your biggest reason for this obligation?
(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;
Okay Osama, let’s hear it – what’s your number one beef with these governments? What’s the most horrible thing they’ve done to you, that makes you want to attack us the most?
He already gave you one right there. That's a motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.
Wow… Weird. That sounds almost like a religious motivation, wanting to establish Islamic Shariah. But please, continue.
Once again, pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it. They prevent them from establishing their own government and he views the current governments as a puppet to the American puppeteer and that they use violence and lies to do it.
That is what is motivating him. It doesn't matter what his goals are, we're concerned with the motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
Okay, that answers that question. Now can you reiterate your biggest reason for this obligation?
No. You aren’t trying to understand his point of view, you are using your point of view. Your point of view is irrelevant. You don’t get to speak for someone else and give imaginary interviews that indicate that X is the biggest reason for this obligation.
Quote from Stairc »
(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.
There we go! Right there, a religious motivation and a secular one living together in harmony in a single sentence. Then there’s another sentence connecting them back to us again and the circle is complete. But could we get the man to say point-blank that his aggression was commanded by religion? Surely that’s too much to ask. It would be nice to have that, sure, since it would settle the question right away, but that’s not realistic to hope for.
Don't ignore the previous things he said. He views these governments as puppets to the American government. These puppet governments are killing his people and preventing them from establishing their own government, the type of government is irrelevant. This is the motivator.
The fact that his goal is to enforce Sharia law or establish a government based on it did not drive him to violence, therefore this is not the motivator. There are in fact people that have this same goal and don't join these terrorist organizations and are non-violent.
Quote from Stairc »
(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator….
Um… Osama… You do know that you’re NOT motivated by religious motivations, right?
Pointing out what he thinks is immoral about us, is not the motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
(ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions.
Uh… I don’t know if you heard me. You aren’t motivated by religious beliefs here. Surely someone’s told you before this.
Pointing out what he thinks is immoral about us, is not the motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression
Well… Well then.
Don’t cherry pick. Once again pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
He’s saying that he has a right to return the aggression, he’s named things that he views as aggressions and oppressions. He is giving justifications for his aggressions.
This is not the motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
But anyway, reasons for attacks aside, let’s see what Osama actively says he wants from us. That’s going to be very revealing, surely.
Who cares? We are not concerned with what he wants from us or what his goals are, we are concerned with the Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
I’m not going to address the rest of what follows in your post because it’s irrelevant for the same reason(s).
Quote from Stairc »
Forget it, I give up, I can’t work with this guy. Besides, I’ve proved my point like nine times over. Osama has clearly stated religious motivations, not just religious language coloring the motivations of a freedom fighter. He also has clearly said that Clinton’s affair is worse than all the things we’ve ever done, or ever could do, to the Middle East.
No one is forcing you to post here, if that’s how you feel, show yourself out.
Quote from Stairc »
There are in fact, people suffering every bit as much from these secular motivations you've listed and are just as angry about it and think civilians should be attacked in revenge and so on... Who don't join these organizations or resort to violence at all. The explanation of secular causes therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
No, I’m pointing out why that reasoning fails and I am not giving an explanation there. I did give one that I felt was better and provided evidence for it but that quote is not where it is, so if you want to attack my explanation – attack the one I gave and not the criticism I gave for why I don’t accept yours.
Okay FoxBlade, I'm completely convinced now that you are immune to anything that disputes your viewpoint. There is absolutely nothing that Osama could say, as far as I can see, that you wouldn't rationalize away. I no longer view you as a rational actor or thinker on this topic. Osama lists as his primary goal for his struggle as getting us to embrace Islam, he says Clinton having an affair is worse than all the things done to his people, says that the correct reasons for their fight are based on Islamic Law, states that establishing their religious beliefs as law is a huge goal for them... But you still refuse to admit that religion can be playing a motivation here in addition to secular motivations.
There's no point discussing this with you any further.
Stairc, I have no desire to exchange in ad hominem attacks with you. If you have an arguement, make it. If you do not, then do what it is you said you were going to do and leave already.
Edit: at a computer... had a bit more I wanted to add:
Quote from Stairc »
here is absolutely nothing that Osama could say, as far as I can see, that you wouldn't rationalize away.
Suppose you get angry and decide to punch me in the face. In this scenario let's suppose I am religious and I reason that my God allows me to justify beating you to a pulp. I think back to my holy scriptures and I find a few passages that support the idea of vengeance and a few more that support the idea of you being immoral and me being moral. Then I reason further that by hitting you back I am doing God's work and that by doing so I might bring you closer to God's grace.
So I beat you to a pulp. What do you suppose the motivator was in this scenario?
Was it you punching me in the face? Was it my religion? Was it my holy scriptures? Was it my goal to bring you closer to God's Grace?
I'm arguing that it's you punching me in the face, regardless of how I justify hitting you back, what my scriptures say, or what my goal was.
Quote from Stairc »
I no longer view you as a rational actor or thinker on this topic.
I've already said a couple of times now, it is unlikely that you or I would change each the others mind. cognitive dissonance & observation bias and all that.
Quote from Stairc »
Osama lists as his primary goal for his struggle as getting us to embrace Islam
So what? The concern is what the motivator is. I never said religion plays no part, the debate is what part religion plays.
Reread my posts, I've already said that I think Bin Laden used his religion to justify his actions but had already decided the action he was going to take (again, the human mind is capable of cherry picking parts that agree with one's world view and ignoring the parts that don't). I'm arguing that the world he saw was unjust and thought that violence was the only action he could take to rectify it. He certainly didn't do because he was evil and he didn't think he was evil, he knew killing people was morally wrong under normal circumstances but he used religion to justify his actions. He thought he was doing the morally good thing.
He didn't do the things he did simply because he was a radical Islamist or because he was some religious true believing zealot.
Quote from Stairc »
he says Clinton having an affair is worse than all the things done to his people
So what? Just because his thoughts are irrational doesn't make it a motivator and just because he views something as immoral doesn't make it a motivator. He didn't decide to crash a couple of planes because Clinton had an affair.
Quote from Stairc »
says that the correct reasons for their fight are based on Islamic Law
Yeah again, I never said religion doesn't fit anywhere here and again the human mind is capable of cherry picking parts that agree with one's world view and ignoring the parts that don't.
Quote from Stairc »
states that establishing their religious beliefs as law is a huge goal for them
So what? That's not the motivator, his goal was independent of the motivator.
Quote from Stairc »
But you still refuse to admit that religion can be playing a motivation here in addition to secular motivations.
Nope. You are conflating the meanings of two words one of which I defined separately, I choose to define what a motivator is and keep it separate from how you are using the word motivation in this context. I mentioned in my long post that it was very important that I did that and this is why it was important that I did that.
Under the definition I provided, no, it was not the thing that motivated him to do the action(s) in question. Those goals are a byproduct and separate from the thing that motivated him do the the action(s) in question.
Remember my scenario? My goal was to bring you closer to God's grace by doing something I think my god would want. That goal didn't motivate me to beat you to a pulp, the fact that you punched me in the face did - the goal is a byproduct of you hitting me in the face. That goal might further motivate me to beat you to a pulp, but it isn't the motivator.
I'm constantly reminded of Matthew 7 when I hear Sam Harris talk. Why he thinks that his criticism should hold any sway in what people should think or do is beyond me. Just listen to him talk and remember this is being good without God again.
Progressivism (and granted, Maher is one of them, but not here) makes no sense to me. To the progressive, the fact that 0.3% of Catholic priests are pedophiles somehow indicts a religion of millions, but a significantly larger chunk of Muslims identify with radical Islam and you're not allowed to say anything because that would be stereotyping? Western progressivism engages in a kind of ressentiment, it's a hipster religion... anything dominant in the West = bad, anything not dominant in the West is praiseworthy or at the very least "misunderstood." E.g., the noble savage myth, the hatred of humanity through environmentalism, abortion and population control, etc.
I think Maher seems to be one of those progressives who is starting to realize that the egalitarian society they want to have is in direct contradiction with the views of the same minorities that they supposedly protect. Things like feminism and gay rights don't mix well with Islam.
I think Maher seems to be one of those progressives who is starting to realize that the egalitarian society they want to have is in direct contradiction with the views of the same minorities that they supposedly protect. Things like feminism and gay rights don't mix well with Islam.
They don't? Gosh, I need to go to my wife's hospital and let all the female Muslim doctors we know that they need to go home and make their husbands a sandwich ASAP
Resistance to Feminism (in terms of Women's Rights) and Gay Rights is a human problem, not limited to any one belief system but instead to a conservative mindset across the board, and especially in poorer or conservative countries across the world, on every continent.
The fact that the 2% Catholic Church's priests are pedophiles (and 2% is the number given by Pope Francis earlier this year), and that the church has shielded many in the past, is an issue worthy of criticism of the Catholic Church's administration, specifically. Not Christianity in general or even Catholics in general. If anyone tries to link it beyond that, they're wrong. Similarly, if someone tries to generalize a specific problem to 'Islam' in general, they're also wrong. Saying 'well progressives do it to Christians' doesn't actually make the generalizations right.
Does Islam have a problem with extremism right now? Yes. But it's less a function of the religion, and more a function of militantism in response to a wide array of social and political pressures to the Middle East over the last two centuries. You're never going to get anywhere close to solving any of the problems you bring up unless you actually address the real underlying problems. Making sweeping generalizations of around a 1/5 of the world's population is silly, because you'll find any human problem that exists with that broad a brush.
The idea that somehow 'foreign' = good to progressives is also silly. We're more critical about things we know and are familiar with because we know them and are familiar with them. They're easy to dissect. Not wanting people to make ignorant, sweeping statements about things they don't know anything about doesn't make them 'good', it just means we don't want to come across like ignorant jackanapes. Many of the statements against Islam, both here and in the media, are the equivalent of saying 'Christians have a pedophilia problem', which we all know to be false, or at least not the whole truth.
I doubt that Surging Chaos is arguing that all islamic people are anti-feminism or anti-gay rights. I have a hunch Surging Chaos is pointing out that the islamic religious texts are anti-feminism and anti-gay rights. Luckily, people have a tremendous capacity to ignore, work around or rationalize elements of any system they don't want to follow. This includes Islam, the same way it includes Judaism, Christianity and all other religions.
If you take the word "Islam" to mean, "any set of religious beliefs of someone identifying as islamic" it's impossible to have a conversation about it. You can't make any statement about what "islam" supports or detracts, there's someone out there with a contradictory opinion identifying as islamic or finding a work-around. The only way you can have a conversation about Islam's position on anything is to identify a certain set of beliefs and talk about those. I have a hunch that Surging Chaos is talking about what the Islamic Texts literally say. Like many other religious texts, they don't like a whole lot of social justice issues.
You're right to point out that Muslims don't necessarily have a problem with feminism or gay rights. Islam, as defined by the Islamic religious texts, is a different story. I don't understand the reluctance of people to admit this. Perhaps because they think it encourages a negative view of Muslims?
I doubt that Surging Chaos is arguing that all islamic people are anti-feminism or anti-gay rights. I have a hunch Surging Chaos is pointing out that the islamic religious texts are anti-feminism and anti-gay rights. Luckily, people have a tremendous capacity to ignore, work around or rationalize elements of any system they don't want to follow. This includes Islam, the same way it includes Judaism, Christianity and all other religions.
If it includes all other religions, why is there a need to talk about it with Islam specifically?
If you take the word "Islam" to mean, "any set of religious beliefs of someone identifying as islamic" it's impossible to have a conversation about it. You can't make any statement about what "islam" supports or detracts, there's someone out there with a contradictory opinion identifying as islamic or finding a work-around. The only way you can have a conversation about Islam's position on anything is to identify a certain set of beliefs and talk about those. I have a hunch that Surging Chaos is talking about what the Islamic Texts literally say. Like many other religious texts, they don't like a whole lot of social justice issues.
Sure, but then you need to say that. If I've got a problem with Christianity because of Leviticus, I would actually bring up Leviticus.
One of the big issues here is that no one has actually read the Quran or even bothered to read a summary. They're just parroting what they've heard, which isn't exactly accurate.
You're right to point out that Muslims don't necessarily have a problem with feminism or gay rights. Islam, as defined by the Islamic religious texts, is a different story. I don't understand the reluctance of people to admit this. Perhaps because they think it encourages a negative view of Muslims?
Then you need to be specific. There is a lot of anti-Muslim bias in the west, and not being clear with what you're talking about is both insulting and helps spread misinformation.
If I were to say 'Christianity has a feminism and gay rights problem', I doubt anyone would accept that as a valid criticism without additional details.
If I were to say 'Christianity has a feminism and gay rights problem', I doubt anyone would accept that as a valid criticism without additional details.
Details are always going to be helpful for detailed discussion, but as far as headlines go I'd say that's a fairly accurate general statement. Akin to "America has an obesity problem." It doesn't have to literally mean every single American is obese to point out a real trend.
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JayX - The problem is that you're countering someone's own interpretation of a non-specific word choice with your own interpretation of the same non-specific word choice. It strikes me as similar to someone saying "Cats have four legs" and you saying, "I know tons of cats in jazz circles, and they all have two legs". You know, cause "cat" is slang in certain jazz communities. That's an extreme example, not a direct parallel to what you're doing, but you're creating confusion by responding to a different interpretation of the word that the person probably isn't using. That's not productive.
The problem is that the word "Islam" means a million things to a million different people. According to some people, Christianity IS against feminism and gay rights (though they probably wouldn't see it as a problem, as they think that's moral). According to other people, Christianity isn't. The same goes for Islam and Muslims.
If you want to make the point you're seem to be out to make, you should try to reduce the confusion - not conflate the terms. Now if you said something like...
"A HUGE number of Muslims don't have any problem with gay rights or feminism - despite what the Islamic texts say... Just as a HUGE number of Christians don't endorse slavery despite what the Biblical texts say. When you say something like 'Islam has a problem with feminism', you're perpetuating a negative impression of Muslims that don't deserve it. The literal text might have a problem with feminism, just as the literal biblical texts tell you to stone unruly children and kill people for worshiping other gods, but that does not mean all Muslims actually hold with those beliefs or take them literally. It's extremely negative to even imply that they do."
I'd have no problem with that. I'd wholeheartedly support that.
If I were to say 'Christianity has a feminism and gay rights problem', I doubt anyone would accept that as a valid criticism without additional details.
Details are always going to be helpful for detailed discussion, but as far as headlines go I'd say that's a fairly accurate general statement. Akin to "America has an obesity problem." It doesn't have to literally mean every single American is obese to point out a real trend.
Sure! Except that's not what is happening here. What's happening here is that people are saying 'Black People have an Obesity Problem', which is technically true but misses out on both the greater context of that problem and uses 'black' and a substitute for 'poor', and issue I know we've talked about in detail here before.
I've acknowledged that a lot of the criticisms are valid when you target the appropriate area. It just needs to not be a thin veil for 'us' versus 'them'.
The problem is that you're countering someone's own interpretation of a non-specific word choice with your own interpretation of the same non-specific word choice. It strikes me as similar to someone saying "Cats have four legs" and you saying, "I know tons of cats in jazz circles, and they all have two legs". You know, cause "cat" is slang in certain jazz communities. That's an extreme example, not a direct parallel to what you're doing, but you're creating confusion by responding to a different interpretation of the word that the person probably isn't using. That's not productive.
By 'Islam' I mean the overarching religious framework all Muslims share, based on the Quran. I'm not sure how else you would interpret it? I mean, I get what you're saying, but part of the issue is that most people don't actually know what they're talking about when they bring up Islam, and they're using 'Islam' as an excuse to make prejudicial comments about Muslims. It's a proxy for the Muslim People, and not the set of beliefs themselves.
"A HUGE number of Muslims don't have any problem with gay rights or feminism - despite what the Islamic texts say... Just as a HUGE number of Christians don't endorse slavery despite what the Biblical texts say. When you say something like 'Islam has a problem with feminism', you're perpetuating a negative impression of Muslims that don't deserve it. The literal text might have a problem with feminism, just as the literal biblical texts tell you to stone unruly children and kill people for worshiping other gods, but that does not mean all Muslims actually hold with those beliefs or take them literally. It's extremely negative to even imply that they do."
Is that not essentially what I was saying? I agree with that statement.
The very first paragraphs of Bin Laden's letter. Yup, no religious motivations here. Bin Laden just flat-out said they were fighting based on Islamic Law, and made a subtle dig at American writers saying they aren't.
Bin Laden's letter is actually a perfect example of what we've all been talking about. He cites many reasons for attacking America. Some of which are issues of geopolitics, others are issues of religion. He repeatedly claims it as his goal to see the Shariah implemented in law - for example...
Even the big topic of who gets to control Palestine is religiously motivated and Bin Laden brings up issues of theological justification for who should get to keep the holy land.
I've been responding to particular arguments that I feel are fallacious, so whether or not a specific attack had religious motivations isn't that relevant to my own points, but I find it amazing the extent to which some people will cover their eyes and ears in the name of tolerance.
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Guilt-mongering, in this case, takes the form of ignoring every fact about the situation except for a particular subset that allows one to place blame on oneself or his civilization for some military or political misadventure. It is often accompanied by the removal of moral and cognitive agency from the people on the other side of the equation, portraying them as if they were mindless insects like bees, who respond savagely to someone poking their nest out of pure instinct rather than any actual conscious process -- making the nest-poker, rather than the bees, responsible for any stings that result.
The reality is that people are moral and cognitive agents moved to action by beliefs. The beliefs that motivated bin Laden's actions, as outlined in his own words, are deeply and indisputably theological. The presence of infidels in a particular geographical location is going to be much less of a problem for you if you don't believe in such things as infidels and you don't believe a particular piece of land is holy. The fact that a particular country doesn't govern itself according to Sharia law is not going to turn you into a mad bomber if you happen to disagree that Sharia law is divinely endorsed. And you'll probably hate the Jews a lot less when you realize that they aren't, in fact, attempting to attain financial control of the entire world through systemic usury perpetrated by transnational banking cartels, which of course they control.
This is the bat-nuts crazy stuff that bin Laden believed, and like all human beings, he is a moral and cognitive agent spurred to action by his beliefs. Laying his actions at the feet of Western civilization rather than his own deranged mind is nothing but an act of pathological self-loathing and guilt-mongering.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
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There is, for lack of a better way to say it, a seeming inability for western liberals, as a group, to believe that groups of people really do believe the literal understanding of whats in their holy books.
However, there's a time when skepticism turns into straight-out denial.
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You should note from my posting history how I feel about religion. The point isn't to deny that religion is bad in many ways, but rather to look at things in context. In that letter Bin Laden states his reasons for his motivation to attack us is because he perceives an injustice:
I don't have time to continue writing out a big long post analyzing every aspect of his letter, but yes - he is a psychopath and yes his views are painted by his religion, but his religion is not what motivated him to terrorism. It is the perceived injustice that motivated him to action, in this case the west attacking Islam/Muslims.
I will get to these arguments in more detail later.
Okay, seriously? Again with the quote-mining? Do you really feel that single sentence conveys the full picture about the motivations of the person writing this letter? I get that you don't have a lot of time, but if it were up to me, I'd rather you wait until you can actually treat the subject with some degree of seriousness.
That being said, your propensity to narrow the picture to this single sentence could, in fact, be explained rather nicely by your ascription to the "bee theory" of human behavior with respect to Al Qaeda. Because what you've done here is played up the supposed provocation, but completely left out all of the intervening cognitive steps between the perception of provocation and the resulting action. It is as if you're saying that blowing up a building full of innocent people is just the inevitable result of someone being aggrieved.
But that's not the case. Bin Laden did feel himself to be the victim of something, but for a human being with cognitive and moral agency, there are a million steps between being aggrieved and blowing up a building. It could have gone any number of different ways. Bin Laden could have been a good Christian and turned the other cheek. He could have been a practitioner of satyagraha and resisted nonviolently. He could have been a Jain, a strict practitioner of ahimsa. He could have practiced a different variety of Islam, say Sufism, that believes that the nonviolent verses of the Koran take precedence over the violent ones that he cites immediately prior to your quote mine. He could have been a pragmatist, said "to hell with it," and taken his billion dollar inheritance off to some island somewhere where he could sip drinks on a beach and bang German models all day.
But he did none of those things, because he was none of those things. He was a radical islamist Jihadist antisemite, and that's what motivated his actions. You don't have to take my word for it; all you have to do is actually read... well, pretty much any portion of the letter other than what you quoted.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Settle down and wait for it.
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Anyway, sorry for the antagonizing posts there Stairc, sometimes when I debate things emotions tend to get the better of me and I start acting an ass and don’t consider that perhaps it’s me who is not being clear. So I’ll try my best to make myself as clear as I can possibly be and try harder to refrain from being antagonistic in the future.
Not really sure where to start, I have a lot of things to go over and this will probably be a pretty long post. Also I probably won’t be able to make another long post like this for a little while (it took me about five hours to write this post!) as I will be pretty busy for the next couple of weeks.
Anyway, enough rambling, it’s time to get down to business. Where to start though? How about some of these more recent posts? Seems as good a place as any.
Perhaps they don’t help my case that much. That being said, I’m not an expert by any means and I don’t have any credibility to speak of in the first place, so I suppose I should thank you for giving me any credibility at all (so thanks for that). In fact, you don’t have to listen to a single thing I say at all. Just the same though, unless someone posting here would like to cite themselves as an expert and that is somehow relevant to what we’re discussing, then I don’t think anyone has any credibility.
That being said, it wouldn’t matter even if I had all the credibility in the world or if anyone had all the credibility in the world and start posting in this thread and took whatever side they felt was correct. As you said already, as I’ve said in the past, and as Matt Dillahunty is fond of saying, it’s:
Moving right along...
Indeed and that isn’t surprising at all. There’s things like cognitive dissonance and observation bias that make it really hard to see the opposing side’s view. It is likely that no matter what any of us have to say, we will not convince the other side of our opposing view.
That’s perfect fine. People’s beliefs aren’t easy to change. I can’t expect you to suddenly just start or to make yourself believe that 1+1=5. As I said before, there was a time not too long ago when I would be right here standing at your side agreeing with Sam Harris, you, Crashing00, and anyone else that has taken your position.
My change in opinion didn’t happen overnight, it happened gradually. But let’s explore further about what I’m referring to here…
This quote is out of context, apologies. I’m not going to make you say something you’re not actually saying though, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. As we see above, I asked Crashing to explain the term, which he defines thusly:
I find the analytical assumption you’re making about the lens I’m viewing this situation in quite interesting. I think it is inaccurate, but interesting and is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance and perhaps observation bias.
Both of those things are tough not to get caught up in. It’s certainly possible that those things are hindering my view point.
However, it’s also quite possible that those things are hindering yours.
Perhaps you are looking at this same situation through the lens of Islamophobic fear-mongering. In this case ignoring every other fact about the situation except for a particular subset (religion) that allows one to place blame on that subset (religious belief) instead of considering the possibility that a person can’t be reduced down to only their religious beliefs and that life experiences, upbringing, peer pressure, etc. also play a part into how a person’s beliefs are shaped.
It is often accompanied by the removal of cognitive and lacking the understanding of the people on the other side of the equation, portraying them as though they are drooling mindless zealots who only go to mosques to pray seven times a day, take their holy scripture literally, and are the only true believers of said religion.
But more importantly, perhaps we shouldn’t make assumptions about what lens the other side is looking through because cognitive dissonance and observation biases play a huge role in how we view the world and hinder our ability to think critically. Perhaps, it is probably something we should consider before we make those assumptions about that lens, because often times they are inaccurate and provoke antagonistic responses that are more often than not, unproductive.
It is not surprising that a deeply religious person’s view of the world are colored by their religion. Just as I am sure it isn’t surprising that someone’s atheism colors their world view. However, just because someone’s view is colored by religion, does not mean that their religion is the reason they are who they are or that it is the only thing that motivates their actions or that it is the thing that motivates them in a particular action.
People and their thoughts are shaped by many things, not just religion. We can’t just look at the fact that a person is religious and views the world through the lens of their religion as the only thing that shapes their world view. Human thought is much more complex than that.
We have to look at what that person is trying to say and not at the fact that they are using religious language to say it.
What do I mean?
Well first, it’s important that I define what exactly a motivator is. That’s something I didn’t do, but something is very important in trying to explain what I’m talking about.
Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
Now then, now that I have defined what I think 'motivator' means (if you disagree with this definition, please feel free to correct it and come up with a definition to describe what you mean when you use this word - perhaps we just misunderstand each other), I am free to move on and so I will:
Well I don’t think I have to go through every sentence of Bin Laden’s letter to make my point, so let’s start with the ‘quote mining’ that Stairc has done with Bin Laden’s letter:
Certainly, this is obvious that the person that wrote this has a religious view of the world, but as I said above – we can’t only look at that aspect, we have to look at what they are saying and not how they are saying it.
Does this paragraph list a motivator here?
It certainly doesn’t look like that to me, it looks like a call to arms while giving a justification for it. It looks like he is acknowledging that going to war is generally viewed as morally wrong, but that in this case – God is giving them permission and since God is the moral giver and that their cause is just, they have God’s permission to engage in an otherwise morally wrong thing. God, is on their side and opposes the other side.
Again, it is not surprising that a person who is deeply religious has their view of the world colored by their religion, but we have to pay attention to what they are saying and not how it is said.
Let’s look at the next part of the letter:
What is Bin Laden saying here? Is this a motivator?
No, it certainly doesn’t look that way either. It looks like he is saying that our media was/is/are writing things about them and that those things that are being said are generating a response from the American people, some of which were truthful and some of which were not.
He wants to take the opportunity to talk about what their motivations actually are, but note that he does not list what any of his motivations actually are here. This is an indication that he is about to list what the motivators are, but not what the motivators themselves are.
Once again, it is not surprising that a person who is deeply religious has their view of the world colored by their religion, but we have to pay attention to what they are saying and not how it is said.
He then goes on to list many things that in his view are hypocrisy, attacks on his people, supporting enemies that have historically attacked and continue to attack him and his people, etc.
These are things that he views as an injustice on him and his people, these are the motivators. We’ll get back to this though in a second.
When seeking to understand these people, what we can’t do is take this approach. You’ve over simplified and mischaracterized what Bin-Laden said in his letter, so let’s look at what he said in regards to the American presence in the Middle East:
That isn’t as simple as how you are characterizing his view.
These are motivators and these are what he views as injustices. He is not just some true believer that is upset that infidels are sitting in his holy land. He lists his reasons right here. Stealing wealth and oil, using military threats, corrupting his lands, protecting people he views as his enemy.
By mischaracterizing his view and simplifying it as you are doing here, you are being intellectually dishonest. It’s wrong, you’re wrong, stop doing that.
Is this guilt-mongering on my part? I don’t think so. Despite how it may come off, I’m seeking to understand his view and people like him in order to try to explain the reason(s) why people join terrorist organizations with the intention of harming other people.
I am not here to make moral judgments on American foreign policy, I’m here to try and understand the people we are talking about and not make assumptions about what they think. Trying to understand their view and how they came to have that view might coincidentally bring American foreign policy under the microscope, but this is because we are seeking to understand their view point and not understand them from our view point, which is tainted with our own cognitive dissonance and personal biases.
More importantly it doesn’t mean you can just write it off as nothing more than guilt-mongering and simply ignore it as such because it’s an important element when trying to understand how they view the world. It helps us to understand their motivations and explain why these people are blowing themselves up, flying planes into buildings, and joining terrorist organizations.
In fact, even if one did agree with Sharia law and think it is divinely endorsed that still isn’t going to magically turn you into a mad bomber. There are people who do agree with Sharia law, think that their government should follow it, take the Koran literally, etc. but don’t join terrorist organizations and are non-violent.
You’ve seen them before on youtube in convenient little clips with people like Dawkins, they also exist here in the United States and Muslims aren’t the only people who think their holy laws should be followed and don’t resort to violence (see dominionism).
Well yeah, no one said that a person’s world view has to be reasonable. It can be completely unreasonable. But whether or not it’s reasonable or not reasonable is a different debate and not important in trying to explain these people and how they view the world.
For the record, no I don’t think their world view or their actions is/are reasonable.
Bat-nuts crazy, certainly. Not crazy in any clinical sense, but certainly in the way you are using the term. Unless you do mean he is clinically crazy, in which case I’d have to disagree with you.
Certainly, he is a moral and cognitive agent spurred to action by his beliefs, but it’s important that we understand his beliefs from his point of view and that we don't narrow his beliefs down to only to his religious views.
Is he Deranged, in the dictionary sense of the word? No, he’s not. He knew what he was doing, thinks he is doing the morally just thing, and views us as the ones who are immoral, himself as moral, and his letter reflects exactly that.
He is not deranged, self-loathing, or guilt-mongering. Nothing indicates that these things are true. This is an assumption on your part.
I don’t think I’m going to address the rest of your posts because I’m pretty sure I’ve addressed your arguments thoroughly enough. For now.
If there are aspects of his letter you’d like me to address, feel free to 'quote mine' it and I’ll address it. If you think there’s an argument I’ve missed, let me know and I’ll address it. If you think I’ve misunderstood you somewhere let me know and I’ll try my best to understand you.
Now then moving backwards to explain why I don’t agree with Sam Harris, Crashing00, Stairc, etc.
The argument:
Stairc agrees:
“Their” is referencing people that join ISIS, al-qaeda, etc. with the intention of hurting other people.
Now, despite my colorful and over exaggerated description of a ‘drooling mindless zealot’ – what I’m talking about is a zealot. So I’m going to define what I meant and what I mean:
Zealot - That is, a person that is fanatical about their beliefs, one whose beliefs are uncompromising, and a true believer.
Why don’t I agree with this argument?
As I’ve said earlier, you can’t characterize people this way. People are more than their religious beliefs, many things help to form a person’s thought processes and how they view the world. Religion is one of those things, but it isn’t the only thing. Life experiences for example, also have an impact on these things as well as many other things.
It is important that we acknowledge this and not ignore it. This explanation fails for several reasons:
1) It does not adequately explain the why the people we are talking about join these organizations with the intention of hurting people.
There are in fact, zealots who are every bit as fanatical, true believing, take a literal view of the Koran, think Sharia law is divine and that governments should follow it, etc. who don’t join these organizations or resort to violence at all. This explain therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
2) There are in fact, people who are not Muslims - who come to sympathize with the people we are talking about, convert to Islam and join these terrorist organizations with the intention of hurting people and this explanation does not explain these people.
3) It Mischaracterizes the people we are seeking to understand and is therefore, intellectually dishonest.
As we can see from Bin-Laden’s letter he is certainly much more than his religious beliefs. Certainly, those religious beliefs color his view of the world. But we can’t let the language he uses in describing his world view distract us from what he is saying.
Not once does he ever reason that his motivation comes from his interpretation of Islam, that is to say, he never reasons that according to God or the Koran, we have to declare war on people or kill them or anything like that. That is far too simplistic of a way to describe his what his motivations are in that letter and it’s inaccurate.
4) It ignores evidence that suggests that this is not the case. Evidence which I have provided already in this thread.
I certainly didn’t come to this conclusion out of the blue, it took me a while to come to it and happened gradually. I’ve done research on it, I’ve read some of these studies, I've debated this already. If you haven’t read them, I encourage you to do so. I find that the explanations that they give, offer a better understanding of the people we are talking about and how they view the world.
Some of the things listed as motivators:
- That there is a perceived injustice and that violence is the only way to achieve change.
- Poor economic situations, that is, by joining these groups they have a chance to earn a living, eat food, drink potable water, place to live, etc. where they otherwise would not have any of these things.
- A sense of belonging and/or a sense of loneliness, that is by joining these groups they feel they belong.
The next argument:
The view that Sam Harris explains as basically, you have this group of Muslims and that group, etc. But this group takes their religious views more seriously than this other group because this group takes a literal view of their holy books, etc.
I don’t agree with this argument for these reasons:
1) There is no reason to suspect that just because a Muslim who puts his life on the line to protect Christians and/or agrees with gay rights and/or doesn’t take a literal view of the Koran is any less serious about Islam than a Muslim who goes out of their way to kill Christians and/or disagrees with gay rights, and/or takes a literal view of the Koran.
That is, they are not less of a believer(s).
The human mind is a complex thing and certainly isn’t always rational. Religious believers are capable of cherry picking beliefs, ignoring contradictions and/or violent texts in favor of ones that do agree with their own world view. This concept works every which way, both for the
Muslimsreligious people who choose to use violence to advance their agendas and the ones who don’t. Both for theMuslimsreligious people that don’t take a literal view ofthe Korantheir holy scriptures and those who do.This is a concept that I’m very reasonably sure that you (Sam Harris, Stairc, Crashing00, and anyone else that agrees with them) understands. These people are not less of a believer(s). They believe just as sincerely as the people you describe as fanatical. To mischaracterize them as less of a believer, is intellectually dishonest and fails to understand the people you are talking about.
It’s wrong, you’re wrong, stop doing that.
Finally, we come back full circle to these things called Cognitive Dissonance and Observation Bias. I’m not above these things, you aren’t above these things, and no one is above these things.
Perhaps these things are obstructing me from understanding your point of view and perhaps my own observation biases are preventing me from coming over to your side. I have no real way of knowing that for sure. I can only do the best I can with the mind I have. I could indeed be wrong and I have absolutely no credibility to speak of.
However, I don’t believe I am wrong and I don’t buy your arguments or the arguments that Sam Harris is peddling.
Sam Harris can line his walls with degrees that says he’s an expert at everything, but he’s as guilty as having these qualities about himself as I am, as you are, as we all are. Indeed, there was a time when I would have agreed with him and stood side by side with you in this thread shouting from the virtual roof tops about how evil religion is and how it’s responsible for 9/11, people blowing themselves up, etc.
Don’t take my word for that, go ahead and search my posting history. I have hundreds of posts that indicate and show me doing this.
Sam Harris even has an added bonus - he lines his pockets by writing and then selling these books with these types of arguments in them. He’s invited on talk shows to share his views on a national platform. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that his financial investment in his world view taken together with the concepts of cognitive dissonance and observation bias probably paint his world view(s) and that we should probably question it and not take his word these things.
Arguments stand and fall on their own merits and it doesn’t matter who said them.
I’m not saying that religion isn’t responsible for some vile things and I’m not saying that Bin-Laden isn’t a vile human being with anti-Semitic views or that his views are reasonable.
He was indeed a radical islamist Jihadist anti-Semite, but that isn't all he was. It’s important to understand what his world view was from his point of view and not our point of view so that we can properly explain these phenomena, even if that takes us to other uncomfortable discussions. We have to look at these things in context and not just point the finger at religion because it’s convenient.
That’s it. That’s all I have to say. I know it’s a lot to read and I apologize for that, but this is a complex topic and isn't easily explained with a quote mine here and there along with a few paragraphs. Crashing was certainly right to criticize me for that, but that doesn't make what I said any less reasonable or make what I said wrong. I will acknowledge though, that I certainly wasn't giving this topic the proper attention and justice it deserves.
I don’t expect that those who disagree with me will change their minds with this one post, but hopefully I’ve explained myself as clearly as possible.
Perhaps I sound irrational to you, but you should note that you sound just as irrational to me. I could probably repeat the a lot same reasoning you gave for not accepting my reasons right back at you verbatim (in fact I did a few times already...) and in my own cognitive dissonance and observational biases, it would and does make complete sense, while your point of view and arguments don't make any sense at all. Maybe I am plugging my ears and sticking my head in the sand. Perhaps it's you and not me who is guilty of that. I don't have any real way of knowing, I can only make the best arguments I can to explain my reasoning and hope that it stands up to scrutiny.
Damn cognitive dissonance and observation biases, getting in the way of it all, grrrrr!
No, Stairc did not say that. Stairc was referring solely to Bitterroot's explanation of what Stairc meant by your equivocating claims that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism with the other thing... And not, as you were currently crying out, that Stairc had claimed you'd endorsed the view that Stalin's crimes were motivated by atheism.
Now for the major clarifications.
My Beliefs
My own beliefs on this matter are as follows.
1) Deeply held beliefs can motivate people to do things, whether wonderful or terrible.
2) Many religious beliefs are deeply held.
C: Therefore, Religious beliefs can motivate people to do things, whether wonderful or terrible.
I don't think anyone can disagree with the above statements or conclusion rationally.
The Sam Harris Quote
From what you've said in this post, and now skimming your previous posts about it again, your beef with Sam Harris seems to be one big equivocation error. You're equating "seriously" with, "sincerely". I know, because you said it.
Thus, by swapping out "seriously" for "sincerely" - you consider the statement somehow dismissive of how deeply held the beliefs of non-crazy people are. But that isn't what Harris or I mean. It's a throwaway quote on live TV based solely on how strictly people follow the holy religious documents in question. You've read way too much into it.
The thing is, sincerity is inarguable. A person is either sincere or he isn't, because sincerity is about what a person believes. What it means to take something "seriously" is arguable. A parent might think his kid isn't taking the SAT seriously because the kid is studying only 2 hours a night, when he should be studying 3 (according to the parent). The kid might think he's taking the SAT seriously because he's studying 2 hours - which to him seems extreme. You can argue about this. However, both sides can be sincere in their beliefs.
Many deeply religious Christians have never read the bible. They still feel their beliefs are deep and sincerely believe them. They also claim the bible to be the word of god. However, they haven't made time to read the book. You could totally call them out for not taking it seriously, that's a point that can be argued. It doesn't mean their beliefs are insincere.
No One is Saying Only Religion is Responsible for Terrorism
Many of your refutations seem to take the form of "Hey, religion doesn't always lead to terrorism and you can have terrorism without religion". No one is denying this. You can stop repeating it.
For example, you gain nothing by listing Osama’s secular reasons for his actions. You don’t have to demonstrate Osama has secular reasons for his actions when no one is saying that he doesn’t. What you should be doing is quoting the religious reasons he also cites and explaining why he doesn’t really mean them. Here, let’s go through a good chunk of the letter.
Osama just flat-out said that the explanations that adhere to truth were based on Islamic Law. Here are some more.
This is one of his sub-points to his very first reason of “you attacked us in Palestine”. The first sub-point is mostly secular, talking about military occupation. This point is obviously religious. It talks about the religious claims to the plot of land and talks about Jerusalem “returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets”.
I notice you used points D and E here, so let’s talk about C. It’s actually a great example, because it’s a mix of religious and secular reasons.
Okay Osama, let’s hear it – what’s your number one beef with these governments? What’s the most horrible thing they’ve done to you, that makes you want to attack us the most?
Wow… Weird. That sounds almost like a religious motivation, wanting to establish Islamic Shariah. But please, continue.
Secular reasons, or is that just “secular coloring”? Nah, these are obviously motivations because they’re listed as such, so I’ll give them due credit.
But is it really a strong motivation? Would you say it’s more a preference or something closer to an obligation you’re trying to achieve?
Okay, that answers that question. Now can you reiterate your biggest reason for this obligation?
There we go! Right there, a religious motivation and a secular one living together in harmony in a single sentence. Then there’s another sentence connecting them back to us again and the circle is complete. But could we get the man to say point-blank that his aggression was commanded by religion? Surely that’s too much to ask. It would be nice to have that, sure, since it would settle the question right away, but that’s not realistic to hope for.
Well… Well then.
But anyway, reasons for attacks aside, let’s see what Osama actively says he wants from us. That’s going to be very revealing, surely.
Yes, go on. Obviously the first thing is going to be “stop the oppression” or, “get out of our land” or something, but as long as something vaguely religious is somewhere on that list… Well, let’s take a look.
Sweet, I was righ… Wait… The second thing? Well what was the first thing then?
Um… My bad?
Well, let’s go back to that second reason. Stop the oppression, immorality and debauchery! Surely he’s talking about the situation in Palestine and… Wait…
Okay, weird point to lead with for a guy primarily focused on getting us to stop killing his people, but there must be more to follow.
Here we go! Off to the races now, let’s list off you number 1 point for why we’re the worst nation. Surely it’s all that killing of you we do and so on.
Um… Osama… You do know that you’re NOT motivated by religious motivations, right?
Uh… I don’t know if you heard me. You aren’t motivated by religious beliefs here. Surely someone’s told you before this.
Right, the president having an affair with a secretary is way worse than all the crimes we’ve inflicted on Palestine – I understand – but Osama, let’s get back on track. You’re a freedom fighter, please, stay on script. Can we get to the atrocities you’re actually fighting against?
Wait, it took us till point ELEVEN to get here? And the rest was about gambling and putting women in bikinis on billboards?
And wait, this is subsection 9 of subsection B of section 1! When are you going to tell us to get out of your lands?
Section 5?! Seriously?! To be fair, there are no subsections after point 2. But in either case, the fifth demand you have is for us to leave. Number five. Five. At least 4 told us to stop supporting Israel and so on but Osama, you aren’t listening. Your acts of terrorism are not religiously motivated. They’re just colored and…
Forget it, I give up, I can’t work with this guy. Besides, I’ve proved my point like nine times over. Osama has clearly stated religious motivations, not just religious language coloring the motivations of a freedom fighter. He also has clearly said that Clinton’s affair is worse than all the things we’ve ever done, or ever could do, to the Middle East.
Done and done. Osama had motivations of both a religious nature and a secular nature. Case closed.
Does That Clarify Things?
I didn't address certain aspects of your post, because I think a lot of it is based on foundations of misconception, miscommunication or some other thing that has a 'mis' in it. I'm hoping to clarify these things first, and see if it unknots the confusion I believe has spider-webbed through the conversation.
Special Extended Edition
I'm trying to attack the root misconceptions, but this point you made was such a doozy that it needed its own response.
There are in fact, people suffering every bit as much from these secular motivations you've listed and are just as angry about it and think civilians should be attacked in revenge and so on... Who don't join these organizations or resort to violence at all. The explanation of secular causes therefore fails outright from this fact alone.
Heck, I can disprove *every* cause of terrorism using this argument.
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I know what it is referring to, the problem isn't the point that you are making, it's the premise that you are using to make it.
You can't on one hand say you aren't saying that while simultaneously use it as your premise to dismiss an argument. If that premise is wrong, you aren't saying that, and you don't endorse that premise, where does that leave your argument?
This is not equivocation. You can swap it out if you like and it's an argument that still works and one that I still agree with.
That is because these people don't take it less seriously just because they don't take a literal interpretation of the bible, etc.
There are every bit as serious about Islam. I would bet my life that Highroller doesn't take everything in the bible literally, but takes his Christianity every bit as serious as the most dogmatic fanatical christian. The same is true for followers of Islam. You can't categorize religious believers this way.
As I said above:
Moving on...
Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
So what? We are concerned with what the motivators are and this is not one of them. Pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
Okay, let's talk about that.
Once again pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
It looks to me like he is explaining his point of view on American foreign policy, why he thinks is hypocritical, and tying in his historical view about why the Jewish view is wrong. What does the following and last paragraph say?
That is the motivator. This is what drives him to do the action in question. He pointed out what he views as American hypocrisy and then went on to explain that his motivation are the dead and that he is avenging those deaths for the widows and orphans.
He already gave you one right there. That's a motivator.
Once again, pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it. They prevent them from establishing their own government and he views the current governments as a puppet to the American puppeteer and that they use violence and lies to do it.
That is what is motivating him. It doesn't matter what his goals are, we're concerned with the motivator.
No. You aren’t trying to understand his point of view, you are using your point of view. Your point of view is irrelevant. You don’t get to speak for someone else and give imaginary interviews that indicate that X is the biggest reason for this obligation.
Don't ignore the previous things he said. He views these governments as puppets to the American government. These puppet governments are killing his people and preventing them from establishing their own government, the type of government is irrelevant. This is the motivator.
The fact that his goal is to enforce Sharia law or establish a government based on it did not drive him to violence, therefore this is not the motivator. There are in fact people that have this same goal and don't join these terrorist organizations and are non-violent.
Pointing out what he thinks is immoral about us, is not the motivator.
Pointing out what he thinks is immoral about us, is not the motivator.
Don’t cherry pick. Once again pay attention to what he is saying and not how he is saying it.
He’s saying that he has a right to return the aggression, he’s named things that he views as aggressions and oppressions. He is giving justifications for his aggressions.
This is not the motivator.
Who cares? We are not concerned with what he wants from us or what his goals are, we are concerned with the Motivator - as in the thing that triggered the action in question. That is, the thing that has moved a person from being an otherwise peaceful person, into a full blown murderer. The thing that drove that person to fly a plane into a building, blow themselves up, become a martyr, join groups like al-shabaab, al-qaeda, or ISIS, with the intent of harming other people .
I’m not going to address the rest of what follows in your post because it’s irrelevant for the same reason(s).
No one is forcing you to post here, if that’s how you feel, show yourself out.
No, I’m pointing out why that reasoning fails and I am not giving an explanation there. I did give one that I felt was better and provided evidence for it but that quote is not where it is, so if you want to attack my explanation – attack the one I gave and not the criticism I gave for why I don’t accept yours.
There's no point discussing this with you any further.
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Edit: at a computer... had a bit more I wanted to add:
Suppose you get angry and decide to punch me in the face. In this scenario let's suppose I am religious and I reason that my God allows me to justify beating you to a pulp. I think back to my holy scriptures and I find a few passages that support the idea of vengeance and a few more that support the idea of you being immoral and me being moral. Then I reason further that by hitting you back I am doing God's work and that by doing so I might bring you closer to God's grace.
So I beat you to a pulp. What do you suppose the motivator was in this scenario?
Was it you punching me in the face? Was it my religion? Was it my holy scriptures? Was it my goal to bring you closer to God's Grace?
I'm arguing that it's you punching me in the face, regardless of how I justify hitting you back, what my scriptures say, or what my goal was.
I've already said a couple of times now, it is unlikely that you or I would change each the others mind. cognitive dissonance & observation bias and all that.
So what? The concern is what the motivator is. I never said religion plays no part, the debate is what part religion plays.
Reread my posts, I've already said that I think Bin Laden used his religion to justify his actions but had already decided the action he was going to take (again, the human mind is capable of cherry picking parts that agree with one's world view and ignoring the parts that don't). I'm arguing that the world he saw was unjust and thought that violence was the only action he could take to rectify it. He certainly didn't do because he was evil and he didn't think he was evil, he knew killing people was morally wrong under normal circumstances but he used religion to justify his actions. He thought he was doing the morally good thing.
He didn't do the things he did simply because he was a radical Islamist or because he was some religious true believing zealot.
So what? Just because his thoughts are irrational doesn't make it a motivator and just because he views something as immoral doesn't make it a motivator. He didn't decide to crash a couple of planes because Clinton had an affair.
Yeah again, I never said religion doesn't fit anywhere here and again the human mind is capable of cherry picking parts that agree with one's world view and ignoring the parts that don't.
So what? That's not the motivator, his goal was independent of the motivator.
Nope. You are conflating the meanings of two words one of which I defined separately, I choose to define what a motivator is and keep it separate from how you are using the word motivation in this context. I mentioned in my long post that it was very important that I did that and this is why it was important that I did that.
Under the definition I provided, no, it was not the thing that motivated him to do the action(s) in question. Those goals are a byproduct and separate from the thing that motivated him do the the action(s) in question.
Remember my scenario? My goal was to bring you closer to God's grace by doing something I think my god would want. That goal didn't motivate me to beat you to a pulp, the fact that you punched me in the face did - the goal is a byproduct of you hitting me in the face. That goal might further motivate me to beat you to a pulp, but it isn't the motivator.
But when I hear you talk, I'm more reminded of Matthew 6. 6:1-5, to be precise.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I think Maher seems to be one of those progressives who is starting to realize that the egalitarian society they want to have is in direct contradiction with the views of the same minorities that they supposedly protect. Things like feminism and gay rights don't mix well with Islam.
They don't? Gosh, I need to go to my wife's hospital and let all the female Muslim doctors we know that they need to go home and make their husbands a sandwich ASAP
Resistance to Feminism (in terms of Women's Rights) and Gay Rights is a human problem, not limited to any one belief system but instead to a conservative mindset across the board, and especially in poorer or conservative countries across the world, on every continent.
The fact that the 2% Catholic Church's priests are pedophiles (and 2% is the number given by Pope Francis earlier this year), and that the church has shielded many in the past, is an issue worthy of criticism of the Catholic Church's administration, specifically. Not Christianity in general or even Catholics in general. If anyone tries to link it beyond that, they're wrong. Similarly, if someone tries to generalize a specific problem to 'Islam' in general, they're also wrong. Saying 'well progressives do it to Christians' doesn't actually make the generalizations right.
Does Islam have a problem with extremism right now? Yes. But it's less a function of the religion, and more a function of militantism in response to a wide array of social and political pressures to the Middle East over the last two centuries. You're never going to get anywhere close to solving any of the problems you bring up unless you actually address the real underlying problems. Making sweeping generalizations of around a 1/5 of the world's population is silly, because you'll find any human problem that exists with that broad a brush.
The idea that somehow 'foreign' = good to progressives is also silly. We're more critical about things we know and are familiar with because we know them and are familiar with them. They're easy to dissect. Not wanting people to make ignorant, sweeping statements about things they don't know anything about doesn't make them 'good', it just means we don't want to come across like ignorant jackanapes. Many of the statements against Islam, both here and in the media, are the equivalent of saying 'Christians have a pedophilia problem', which we all know to be false, or at least not the whole truth.
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If you take the word "Islam" to mean, "any set of religious beliefs of someone identifying as islamic" it's impossible to have a conversation about it. You can't make any statement about what "islam" supports or detracts, there's someone out there with a contradictory opinion identifying as islamic or finding a work-around. The only way you can have a conversation about Islam's position on anything is to identify a certain set of beliefs and talk about those. I have a hunch that Surging Chaos is talking about what the Islamic Texts literally say. Like many other religious texts, they don't like a whole lot of social justice issues.
You're right to point out that Muslims don't necessarily have a problem with feminism or gay rights. Islam, as defined by the Islamic religious texts, is a different story. I don't understand the reluctance of people to admit this. Perhaps because they think it encourages a negative view of Muslims?
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If it includes all other religions, why is there a need to talk about it with Islam specifically?
Sure, but then you need to say that. If I've got a problem with Christianity because of Leviticus, I would actually bring up Leviticus.
One of the big issues here is that no one has actually read the Quran or even bothered to read a summary. They're just parroting what they've heard, which isn't exactly accurate.
Then you need to be specific. There is a lot of anti-Muslim bias in the west, and not being clear with what you're talking about is both insulting and helps spread misinformation.
If I were to say 'Christianity has a feminism and gay rights problem', I doubt anyone would accept that as a valid criticism without additional details.
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candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
JayX - The problem is that you're countering someone's own interpretation of a non-specific word choice with your own interpretation of the same non-specific word choice. It strikes me as similar to someone saying "Cats have four legs" and you saying, "I know tons of cats in jazz circles, and they all have two legs". You know, cause "cat" is slang in certain jazz communities. That's an extreme example, not a direct parallel to what you're doing, but you're creating confusion by responding to a different interpretation of the word that the person probably isn't using. That's not productive.
The problem is that the word "Islam" means a million things to a million different people. According to some people, Christianity IS against feminism and gay rights (though they probably wouldn't see it as a problem, as they think that's moral). According to other people, Christianity isn't. The same goes for Islam and Muslims.
If you want to make the point you're seem to be out to make, you should try to reduce the confusion - not conflate the terms. Now if you said something like...
"A HUGE number of Muslims don't have any problem with gay rights or feminism - despite what the Islamic texts say... Just as a HUGE number of Christians don't endorse slavery despite what the Biblical texts say. When you say something like 'Islam has a problem with feminism', you're perpetuating a negative impression of Muslims that don't deserve it. The literal text might have a problem with feminism, just as the literal biblical texts tell you to stone unruly children and kill people for worshiping other gods, but that does not mean all Muslims actually hold with those beliefs or take them literally. It's extremely negative to even imply that they do."
I'd have no problem with that. I'd wholeheartedly support that.
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Sure! Except that's not what is happening here. What's happening here is that people are saying 'Black People have an Obesity Problem', which is technically true but misses out on both the greater context of that problem and uses 'black' and a substitute for 'poor', and issue I know we've talked about in detail here before.
I've acknowledged that a lot of the criticisms are valid when you target the appropriate area. It just needs to not be a thin veil for 'us' versus 'them'.
By 'Islam' I mean the overarching religious framework all Muslims share, based on the Quran. I'm not sure how else you would interpret it? I mean, I get what you're saying, but part of the issue is that most people don't actually know what they're talking about when they bring up Islam, and they're using 'Islam' as an excuse to make prejudicial comments about Muslims. It's a proxy for the Muslim People, and not the set of beliefs themselves.
Is that not essentially what I was saying? I agree with that statement.
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