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Lorn and That Goat like this
Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2015 23:14:40 GMT -6
Easier to convince yourself? No, I do not agree; humans can just as easily have bad intentions and act on them in the complete absence of any religious teachings. If people want to do something badly enough, there is little to stop them from trying. If anything, since most religions actually preach against doing evil, the existence of religious beliefs (if the persons in question are sincere about them) actually makes it harder to act on bad intentions due to the creation of cognitive-dissonance. Thing is, cognitive-dissonance may at times be enough to get people to step back, re-evaluate the situation and prevent them from doing that which goes against their teaching. However, if a person is dead set on doing something that is not consistent with their beliefs, then they are going to do something very interesting in response to this internal feeling of inconsistency -- they are going to take the message they have been given, bend it and twist it until they ultimately get it to (in their minds) fit and even support their cause! Which leads me to my next point. If you had said religion makes it easier to convince others to do terrible things, yes, that is more likely a true statement. Once someone takes a religious message and corrupts it, they can find like-minded people within the same religious group to follow them. That, however, is a failing of the humans in question, not a failing of religion (which was point -- humans, not religion, are the problem). And guess what? Religion is not even the driving force behind this atrocity in Paris!! What you see here is the work of one thing, one motivation that is purely human in nature: greed. You see, people in the Middle East are being massacred all the damn time. Things like what happened in Paris are par for the course over there, you just do not hear about it. And why? Because there are wealthy nations whose economies run on killing people. What these terrorist groups do in response is simply the natural thing for anyone to do when they are being pushed around -- they kickback. No religion required in this picture. All that is required is for people to crave wealth, enough to kill other people for it, and for humans to respond the way it is in their nature to. Religion is a peripheral factor at best, it is used to reinforce the motives of the players at hand. (Now, for the record, I am in no way defending terrorist actions such as these are justified. I see it just like a bullied student carrying out a school-shooting -- you understand why it happened, but killing innocent civilians is not the right solution). One point that you make is fair and often overlooked, the power of religion to stop people from doing bad things. It's overlooked because it's not really quantifiable- it's not a news story when someone decides not to murder someone else in the name of religion. It is a news story when someone shoots an abortion doctor or commits arson on abortion clinics, or attacks a venue in Paris "where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice." To say people will always do bad things regardless of religion is true but I say not entirely- I do think there are many cases where people would not have done these things were it not for the perceived compulsion of their religion. You say the compulsion is really the fault of other people, not the religion, but I don't think that distinction is particularly meaningful. Religion is an institution of people, it wouldn't exist and has no value without the belief and interpretation of those people. It comes with the territory that sometimes that interpretation is used to justify evil things. I never said it was religion's "fault," but neither do I subscribe to the notion that it is either the person or the tool- if the tool, in this case religion, allows someone to claim the moral superiority by divine mandate of everything they espouse, it should go without saying that that is a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands. As for your last point about the motivations behind the Paris attack. Personally I don't follow atheist circles nearly as much as progressive ones, so for example, I had never heard of this 'atheist plus' thing until Heretic suggested I'm probably one of them. But one thing I've heard about recently is this divide between so-called 'new atheists' and progressives (now pejoratively called regressive, har har) with regard to what motivates Islamic extremism. What you're talking about is the progressive position, that it is all based on geopolitical grievances and has nothing to do with religious ideology. New atheists argue that it is more of the opposite. Personally I sympathize more with the progressive side, but you really can't say it is either/or, in my opinion. Both factors have a role in inspiring extremism. Sometimes it's because a coalition airstrike bombed a wedding or a funeral or a hospital, sometimes it really is because those damn infidels and their abomination and perversion for enjoying a soccer game, and probably it is usually a mixture of both. When you look at the Paris attack, it appears that many of these attackers may be native European Muslims who weren't personally wronged by the West's involvement in the Middle East at all, but became radicalized nonetheless. You would also be hard pressed claim the Charlie Hebdo killings were primarily due to blowback from France's foreign policy, rather than simple intolerance to criticism of Islam.
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