BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

barmar, on 2016-June-18, 11:50, said:

This comparison with abortion bombers/assassins has occurred to me as well. To the best of my memory no one, certainly not any president, referred to them as radical Christian terrorists. It is true they are radical, it is true they are terrorists, and it is true they find inspiration for their actions in Christian theology. And it is also true that the vast majority of Christians have no intention of bombing anything or shooting anyone.


While we are on this business of shootings, the following occurred to me. Everyone, almost everyone, agrees that a mentally unbalanced person should not be allowed access to weapons, at least not of the mass killing sort. The problem is how to identify the person who is mentally unbalanced. Borrowing from Catch-22, I suggest the following: If a person attempts to purchase a weapon that is capable of killing/wounding a hundred or so people in the span of a couple of minutes, that should be taken as persuasive proof that he is mentally unbalanced, thus the purchase would be denied. Such a test would be far more accurate than having some shrink ask him how he feels about his mother.

helene_t, on 2016-June-18, 07:20, said:

That shocks me more than I can say, that's unbelievable, I thought the Danish government (and by extension people who would want to be in it) was well past such sociopathic tendencies. How terribly sad and distressing.

kenberg, on 2016-June-18, 12:13, said:

Althought the Sandy Hook shooter did shoot his mother before going to the school.

barmar, on 2016-June-18, 11:50, said:

I am not saying let bygones be bygones, but perhaps it is time to let go of things that were done 1000 years ago, by people who are long dead.

There are a lot of groups of people running around looking for someone to hate. Blaming it on a religion is not really correct -- they will justify their actions through some reading of a religious text because this makes it easier to recruit and persuade, and some of them may really believe it, but the underlying problems usually have more to do with economics and power.

We do seem to have some inconsistency in framing. The Orlando shooter did not kill "because he was muslim." In fact there is little evidence that he had any contact with ISIS; he just used them as his excuse to do what he probably would've done anyway. He was a violent, hateful man who also seems to have abused his wife. He spent a lot of time ranting about killing and hurting people, and he seems to have had a particular hatred of gay people. Nonetheless, there is a rush to categorize this shooting as terrorism (rather than a simple hate crime) because the shooter was muslim and said he was doing it for ISIS.

There are plenty of examples of killings by Christians. In fact most of the mass shootings, as well as the oklahoma city bombing, were by "christians." Of course they did not kill "because they are christians" but many credited organizations (like white supremicist groups, most of which claim to be christian) or anti-abortion groups (which again, claim to be christian) for inspiring them. Strangely we do not seem to consider these attacks to be terrorism (religious double standard).

If we take the crazy loners who credit their religion off the table, there's also plenty of bad behavior by christians. The Bosnian genocide in the 90s was perpetrated by christians against muslims. It was pretty much straight religious genocide. Yet somehow it's not blamed on their christianity (while any similar act by muslims would surely be blamed on "radical islam"). The "kill the gays law" in Uganda was passed by christian leaders, encouraged by american christian leaders. Even Hitler was nominally christian, and the pope didn't say much about the holocaust at the time (or even for years after). But somehow we never blame "radical christianity" for any of these atrocities. And this is not stuff from 1000 years ago, this is all from the last century.

The reality is that a lot of awful stuff happens in backward countries with poorly educated populations and authoritarian leaders. And when the leaders are overthrown things do not necessarily get much better. Religion is often a handy excuse to justify atrocities and get a large mass of people "on your side" -- and this is true almost no matter what the religion is. The only reason we see relatively more of this from muslims is that the world has sorted itself out in a way where many of the christian countries are fairly wealthy with educated populations and most of the muslim countries are not. Backward christian countries (the aforementioned Uganda being a good example) can be awful too, there are just fewer of them.

Substitute ignorance for acknowledgement, dogma for discernment and prejudice for perception and what you get should be no surprise. Human evolution is slow and the evolution of humanity appears to be a painful and arduous process. We are certainly more aware of our foibles and failures and awareness is the first stage of the evolution of consciousness.

awm, on 2016-June-19, 14:20, said:

I am not convinced that this is true.

Religion is a vector for all kind of ideas, good or bad. If someone's hate towards, say, gay people is motivated by religion then it is more likely to spread to other people who share the same religion.

The conflict in Northern Ireland may in some sense be about nationality or social status than about religion per se, but nevertheless it is the religious divide that makes it possible to label people as "us" versus "them". As it happens, people in Northern Ireland all speak the same language and have the same skin colour. Without religion, people's affinity with either group, and other people's tendency to labeling them, would be weaker.

helene_t, on 2016-June-19, 15:50, said:

What seems to happen though, is that someone is unhappy with their life. This often has to do with economics (cannot find a good job, cannot afford a home) or with social issues (cannot find a boyfriend/girlfriend, does not feel accepted in community) or just with mental illness. They look for someone to blame for why they do not like their life. They get some dubious advice from somewhere, or start reading stuff on the internet, or fall in with a group of similarly disaffected people, but somehow or other they pick out a group of "other" people (who usually have nothing to do with the original issues) and decide they are to blame. Then sometimes they decide to kill those people.

Religion is a common place for these people to get bad advice or meet similarly disaffected folks. It probably has impact on who they choose to blame for their problems. But the underlying problems are not really caused by religion (and are certainly not particular to a single religion), and its quite possible that without the religion these people would turn to other places to get bad advice (anti-government militias, racist groups, conspiracy theorists, communist manifestos, armchair psychologists, anti-technology extremists, etc) and would kill anyway (possibly a different set of victims).

My mother was brought up as a Seventh Day Adventist but she liked to drink, smoke and play poker so she became a Presbyterian. Presbyterians believe in pre-destination so the whole "where will I be going" thing has already been decided anyway. Probably I over-simplify.

Religion is a complex thing. At its best, it can be an organizing mental outlook where we see ourselves as part of a whole, with responsibility to all. At its worst, it can be really awful. It seems to me that the religious people who take the first approach are good people from the start but they find religion to be a helpful guiding force. And the bad are bad from the start. But religion can reinforce. And that's both the good news and the bad news.

Bottom line: You can't go around shooting people. You can't do if God told you to, and you can't do it if you just feel like doing it.

kenberg, on 2016-June-19, 18:05, said:

i CALL myself a Catholic?Presbyterian....I agree I find the whole issue of pre/destination confusing at best.
I dont see these Muslim killers saying God told them however if God does tell them....I dont think the issue is that simple.


See a guy called Abraham.


See the woman and her child in Revelations in the New
Testament.

Otoh if you view religion as just another form common form of insanity...ok
//then logic demands a huge number of humans are insane.

awm, on 2016-June-19, 14:20, said:

You have remember about Islam is that a state is integral to the religion. No religion is as bound to structure of political power. Catholism is poor second. Look at that bowing to Mecca and caliph and a lot more. Leader rules trump a lot of religion rules.

When it's a lone actor like in Orlando, it's easy to label religion as simply an excuse that they adopt, and that may be right.

But when it's organized like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, religion is one of the most successful methods that they use to fill their ranks. They take poor, disaffected youth and give them promises of martyrdom and virgins in the afterlife, and that's how they get suicide bombers.

It's not the only way -- I don't think Japan used religion to get kamikaze pilots. But it's a very powerful method.

cloa513, on 2016-June-20, 00:15, said:

I think this is incorrect. Islam has no institutional leadership to say what it must or must not do, so like so many other religions there are countless variations of interpretations. In any religion, it is the leadership that "teaches", not the religion. There are some Islamic leaders who tout the interpretation of your post - but it is not a universal position that Islam requires a "literal" religious state.

IMO, the reason for the seeming cruelty of Islam is cultural. Religions have as three main purposes: power, control, and survival. To survive, religions are required to change their positions as culture progresses. Religions, in this respect, do not lead but follow. It was the Catholic Church that tortured and killed thousands in the Inquisition - because the culture of that time tolerated the activity. Today, there would be a huge outcry and condemnation of the same actions that were once thought right and proper. The Church did not change - culture changed and dragged the Church along with it.

Today in many parts of the world the culture is still quite severe - and because of that the interpretation of religions in those areas are quite severe. It is not quite so simple as calling it an economic problem else how can the doctor who blew himself up along with 9 CIA agents be explained, or the mostly middle-class youths who flew the planes in the 9-11 attacks? For actions that transverse economic conditions, cultural influence is required.

Change of culture is not a simple fix nor does it ever occur quickly - it was only 1964 in the U.S. that the Civil Rights Act was passed and signed into law - barely 100 years after a war that freed slaves.

These are human problems and only humans can change their attitudes and thinking. We should not be castigating any group for the type of magic they accept as real but should be actively working to expand "The Enlightenment" so that cultures view all magical beliefs as unlikely to be of service.

barmar, on 2016-June-20, 09:14, said:

Here is a pretty good short article on the subject. Perhaps the comparison is not as helpful as one might believe.

Zelandakh, on 2016-June-20, 09:49, said:

That seems to confirm what I said: the kamikaze pilots were conscripted, they didn't really volunteer for religious or patriotic reasons.

barmar, on 2016-June-20, 12:20, said:

Have we reached the point where Trump supporters are compared to kamikaze pilots?

Winstonm, on 2016-June-21, 11:43, said:

Well, many other party members seem to be acting as if endorsing him is political suicide.

I think Trump is very much like a televangelist - he has a lot of zealot believers but most of Main Street America isn't in the crowd. He will lose and lose by a gigantic margin, if he survives his own party's attempts to lynch him. I would not be totally surprised to see his opt out before November - if he senses an embarrassment in the making.

This is a man who has nothing on his mind other than aggrandizing himself - if he senses that he has reached the pinnacle of his current quest for attention, I am more and more confident that he will start to look for ways to bow out and save face - perhaps even prior to the convention.

Winstonm, on 2016-June-21, 18:19, said:

So, who would be the "alternative" to be sacrificed to Hil. And more important, could that person win?

I interrupt for an old joke that came to mind while I was watching the PBS Newshour last night. They announced the "political" portion of the show and first up on the screen was Hillary, talking about Donald.
The old joke: A guy meets a girl and after an hour or so of one sided conversation he says "But that's enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?"