Islam IS to blame (cont'd)

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

First of all, I would like to state that I had a great time in our debate, and it shall now continue.

After all this time, I finally noticed that the way the argument was presented is as follows:

I totally didn’t realize the word “causative” in there. Which was completely a fault of my own. I was so clear in my mind about what I was arguing, I basically was talking past you, Xunzian.

I don’t want to argue religion has a “causative” role. Really, that makes no difference. I don’t care what causes people to turn to the religious beliefs that they hold currently in the Middle East. As I said in my reply to Felix in the discussion, social or economic circumstances certainly could be the catalyst that causes people to turn to more a more fundamentalist belief system of Islam. Maybe, those circumstances cause people to actually interpret the texts more literally than they otherwise would, and put more focus on the violent verses (although, as I’ve shown in my argument, they have justification for putting the focus there; however, other Muslims have that same justification, but don’t use it).

But I’m arguing that the catalyst isn’t as important as the resulting actions once one is pushed towards those kinds of beliefs. Even if one is forced to interpret verses violently due to economic or social circumstance, I still don’t think you’ve addressed the direct correlate of belief and action, once those beliefs are accepted as true. When you paint a picture with such broad strokes, as you have, you lose focus of the obvious belief-related actions. I’ll go more into that in a second.

You said in your rebuttle that my reasoning was circular. That I had decided first that religion was the cause, then went to look for evidence to justify my belief. This is disingenuous. I don’t know if you were using sleight of hand to win the debate, or if you actually believe that, but considering a person of your intellect, I hope it’s the latter as opposed to not recognizing the obvious fallacy. Allow me to demonstrate. Xunzian is using circular reasoning, because he starts with the belief that economic / social causes are the main problem in the Middle East, not religion. He then looks for evidence to justify his position. You see how easy that was? Of course, I don’t actually believe that. You mention using data on the ground to reach your conclusion. Let’s go back now to those belief-related actions with a simple thought experiment.

Suppose a Martian comes to earth to study human behavior. He studies the world over, and eventually makes his way to the Middle East. Unlike other parts of the world that are stricken with poverty, he notices that women here are wearing strange head dresses. He notices that they are always accompanied by men. He notices that there are women who are buried up to their necks in dirt, after which a dump truck pours rocks onto their skulls, crushing them. He notices that women are not allowed an education, unlike other poverty stricken parts of the world. They notice women are being killed in rituals called “honor killings.”

The Martian notices that 5 times a day, many people in these cities stop whatever they’re doing and pray towards Mecca. He travels elsewhere, and sees people, even in developed countries, asking for the beheading of others because of a cartoon posted of a religion’s prophet.

Xunzian, are you saying that if this Martian concluded that many of these actions and behaviors were largely related to religious belief, he would be mistaken? This is from data collected first, not as you would have it, circular.

And let me be clear before this discussion goes further. First, about honor killings. There’s tons of information on it on Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

I am fully aware that it makes mention of other religions, cultural, and social circumstances that serve as a conduit for such killings. What I want everybody to realize is that, like suicide bombing, there can be more than one motivation for committing such actions. We need to stop thinking so narrowly, that economic circumstances are to blame, or religious belief is to blame, and realize that all of these factors are intertwined. As I stated once in our discussions, Xunz, poor areas indisputably have higher crime rates. But if religious belief had absolutely no role to play, then I would expect the behavior of people in these poverty stricken areas to be somewhat similar. But we don’t see the same kind of behaviors in other poor parts of the world that we do in the Middle East. There are many ways to express violence, and all I want is for people to recognize that religion can serve as one of those expressions, shaping the form in which it takes.

And who cares if it’s only 200 out of 1 billion Muslims who would commit atrocities solely due to religious belief (which has obviously happened, based on the profiles of the terrorists involved with 9/11)? It only takes one with a nuclear weapon to kill millions. Isn’t that a problem worth recognizing?

2

Hi Dorky–People were doing all those heinous things before Muhammed was born. Islam just hasn’t been effective in making them stop.

The main difference is that now they have obtained and can be expected to obtain more deadly weapons. Timothy McVeigh wasn’t a Muslim was he? If someone like McVeigh or Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, gets hold of WMD, it won’t matter that he is not a Muslim or particularly religious.

3

I’m very tired right now, so forgive me if I veer into incoherency.

First, I really enjoyed the debate very much. You raised a lot of good points.

As for the alien, I would say that he is looking at a poor sample. Take violence against women. That has been practiced all over the world in many different forms. Foot binding in China, breast ironing in Cameroon, genital mutilation throughout the whole freakin’ continent of Africa as well as some areas in South America, and that is without even going into systemic abuses that lead to violence against women like disparities of power found in almost all traditional cultures! If you want to talk about killing women, look at Juarez Mexico, that place make Iraq look like a walk in the park. You can even find that sort of thing in America, where the Baltimore police department is infamous for not fully investigating the murder of many women per year.

That is what I mean when I talk about the circular reasoning I do think you are employing. Violence against women is a fairly ubiquitous trait, so it should come as no surprise that it also exists in Muslim nations. But then going on and saying that the violence against women is because of Islam is a bridge too far.

It is a matter of precision vs. accuracy

I think the claim that there is violence against women in Muslims countries is entirely accurate. But I think that claim lacks precision. On the other hand, relating violence to economic factors (such as the gini) has a very good degree of both precision and accuracy.

When you have something that is accurate but not precise, it usually means that a critical variable is being left out. The trick is that when we go and account for the economic variable, the one I think is missing in that analysis, we find that we don’t really need to include the religious variable. Cyrene had his own disagreement with the position I’ve taken and expressed it here. I linked this paper whose graphs make my point quite elegantly for me. I’ve challenged Cyrene and I’ll offer you the same challenge: can you find evidence to show that Muslim countries are statistically more violent than those with similar income inequality, unemployment, and gender-based measures? We’ve got to compare like to like here if we are actually to see what is going on, after all.

4

Your challenge isn’t the only way to provide evidence that religion is a huge influence in the middle east. I can provide evidence fundamentalists are more likely to be violent than moderates envolved in the same conflict.

Suicide bombers aren’t statistically poor or uneducated in many locations, but they’re reliably nutjoblike commitment to a religious group.

T he violence/inequality with women is hard to place on religion, byproducts of male psychology are just as much (more to blame) honestly theres some clear cut cases of strong religious influence.

Religion justifies the desires/actions which can routinely occur in such cultures.

Yeah Xun male abuses against females have A LOT more to do with male sexuality than inequalities, or poverty. Its very common in our own society, just not to that horrifying extent.

Religion still plays a huge role in the middle east.

5

You’re missing the point. Again. I can’t say this enough. The fact that other people set off bombs is irrelevant. Let me say that again, because you and Xunzian are REPEATEDLY missing the point.

[size=200]The fact that other people set off bombs is irrelevant.[/size]

People are capable of setting off bombs for other reasons. That is NO detractor from the argument that the religion of Islam plays a crucial role in the shape violence and social issues take in the Middle East.

Xunzian, either you are completely missing my point, or I am completely misunderstanding yours, and I’m open to both possibilities.

If I can restate your argument, it is: Violence against women has been practiced worldwide throughout history; therefore, religion plays no role in violence against women.

Is that accurate? Or am I misconstruing your position? I’ll say it again, although I hate to sound like a broken record. The fact that violence occurs against women has NO RELEVANCE to what role religion plays when it comes to violence against women in the Middle East. The reason I repeatedly say this is, once again, people can have about a million (+/- 1% margin of error) different motivations for violence against women. Maybe it’s because it’s acceptable as a culture. If that were the case, the remedy would be to change the cultural paradigm. In cases where it’s caused by religion, the cure is to change the religious paradigm. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

America is the richest country in the world, isn’t it? And isn’t our violent crime rate higher than many other countries? Are we just an outlier, or could it be there are other causes besides economic ones?

By the way, I don’t get the illustration. One might be more precise, but it’s still missing the point, which is the middle, right? To me it seems to be a useless word game.

I’ll say it one more time, since you bring it up again. I don’t care if they are more violent than other countries with those similar traits. If one country has tons of people being murdered by guns, and another by suicide bombers, I think it’s just lazy to say it’s only because of economic circumstance.

6

hmm… how best to contribute…

I still feel as though I can agree with the both of you (xun/dorky), and i think it might be because I consider religion to be the banner and not the motivation. I don’t think muslims sit in a circle and have theological debates where they decide that God would want them to go blow up some sinners. Nor do I think it’ can be seriously suggested that some muslim households bring up thier kids so fanatically so as to have that be their innitial reaction (blowing themselves up) when bad things take place. What I think is happening is that the emotions that people have towards their religion is being played on and that makes them rally to it’s defense. After all, being “muslim” is a large part of their identity, and it is not at all uncommon for people to defend themselves and their tribe with their lives if they feel it is in danger… and even decide to go down fighting if all is lost. HOWEVER, the rally point in this case IS religion, of that there can be no doubt…

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again… I don’t think islam or any religion is the trigger that sets off people or sends them towards violence… but I DO think it dictates what WOULD. Hard to imagine a cartoon triggering such violence if not for religion… no?

I hear Xun talking about poor material conditions regularly being a trigger for violence, and Dorky talking about islam dictating allot of violent reactions to various events… So I don’t see why what Xun is saying should contradict what Dorky is saying.

Being poor, uneducated and opressed generally makes people less friendly (yet more religious)… being more religious as a muslims invites you to be less friendly towards non-muslims in certain ways… put them together… it adds up.

7

Cyrene,

Then do so, please! But be sure to account for the economic situation since fundamentalism does correlate to poverty. Poverty, on the other hand, doesn’t correlate with fundamentalism very well. That is a large part of my point.

Dorky,

I’m not sure that follows, that has to do with my accuracy/precision distinction. At the end of the day, people really aren’t that different from one another so it follows that their motivations ought be more-or-less in line with each other. That is my point, when you look at violence as a function of religion you get a very fuzzy scatter, whereas if you look at violence as as function of economic factors, you get a much tighter fit. That tells me that religion’s correlation may be a coincidence as opposed to a crucial factor whereas the correlation with economic conditions is less likely to be coincidental.

I think a better way of phrasing it would be, “Since violence against women is a pan-cultural phenomenon, it doesn’t make sense to blame specific cultural institutions for its existence.”

That seems too tabula rasa for my tastes. Do people really have millions of different reasons for their actions or are humans governed by a more limited set of shared motivations? Think about that pragmatically as opposed to absolutely for a second: which approach is more likely to achieve results? Even expression of the violence are pretty independent of religion, look at female genital mutilation. It is practiced by animists, Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Africa. Foot-binding was practiced by Buddhists, Confucians, Daoists, and Muslims. And so on and so on.

See the NYTimes article I posted in the other thread with Cyrene, as well as the paper. Gini (a measure of income inequality) is a better predictor than GDP. While America is the richest country in the world, it also has a relatively high gini (a wide income distribution/more economic inequality). That allows for pockets of poverty within America, which is where our violence comes from.

It is pretty critical to scientific investigation. The illustration was designed to show what accuracy and precision each look like, but what is important is having both. I’m arguing that the religion hypothesis has accuracy but lacks precision whereas the materialist hypothesis has both precision and accuracy (inasmuch as precision and accuracy exist in social sciences).

What is the difference? People use the tools they have available and as the situation dictates. Guns are a great tool in symmetrical warfare but are considerably less useful for the weaker side in asymmetrical warfare. Suicide bombing isn’t a rational use of resources in symmetrical warfare but it is an incredibly powerful tool in asymmetrical warfare. Again, if you look at the various conflicts where suicide bombing has been employed, Islam is accurate but not precise. On the other hand, saying that it was due to the asymmetrical nature of the conflict is both accurate and precise (I talked about this in the debate).

MMP,

I think a lot of what you are saying makes sense, but like I said in the debate, I see blaming religion as equivalent to blaming flags in national conflicts. Napoleon talked about how effective the French Flag was for the morale of his troops, sure, because it is a symbol of the nation. Things like flags, ethnicity, religion, and so on, all serve to demarcate groups. How the groups relate is another matter entirely, a difference in flags does not demand conflict, right?

In terms of what sets people off, that may be true to an extent but I think of it more of a symptom as opposed to a disease. Since we’re talking about flags, I may as well use that example. In America there is an on-again/off-again debate as to whether burning the American flag should be legal (stupid, I know). Here is the funny thing: burning the flag is also the only proper way to dispose of the flag. So it isn’t the act of burning the flag itself that is the controversy but rather who is burning the flag as well as how they are burning it. Likewise, it isn’t that Mohammad was depicted in that cartoon, but rather how he was depicted. Now, I know what you are going to say, that Islam forbids pictorial representations of living creatures in general and very stringently forbids picture of the prophet. That sounds nice, but the reality is more complex than that. The Persians, for example, have historically allowed for pictorial representations of Mohammad, and there was no mass revolt against that even though it was well known at the time. Heck, a fatwa given by Ali al-Sistani, the Shi’a marja of Iraq, allows for the depiction of Muhammad, even in television or movies, if done with “respect”. It is like drinking in Muslim countries. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam, but arak is not uncommon in Muslim countries and is consumed by many, many people. US soldiers often comment on how surprised they are to find drunk Iraqis, since they didn’t think that Iraqis did that sort of thing. So that it was “just” a comic isn’t enough. It was a comic negatively depicting Mohammad, created by what they consider to be an Imperialist power that is oppressing them. So the “how” and the “who” are critical here, as well as the power dynamic between the parties.

Plus, controversies over cartoons aren’t exclusive to the Muslim world. Look at things like the The Rupert Bear Controversy.

8

The difference between our views seems to be that I see religion as having A role in problems and you see it as having THE primary role. The arab conflicts in the middle east before Muhammed were regional and tribal. People were killing each other. Muhammed didn’t originate that. Islam unified people in the region on a wider then tribal basis. They took their show on the road and defeated parts of Europe. Islam was instumental in accomplishing that. The Muslim empire advanced civilization in many ways. So its a mixed bag; just like everything else that people do.

You see religion as THE problem. I see people as THE problem. Take away religion and you will still have THE problem. The secular totalitarian states of the 20th century proved that. The so-called “new Atheism”, should it become a powerful political force, will prove it again.

9

Xun I did provide those studies in my own thread(that fundamentalists vs moderates in the same conflict), fundamentalism may be linked with poverty but suicide bombing surely isn’t significantly linked, suicide bombers are usually educated fairly above the poverty line, always hardcore fundamentalist though. I’m sure theres exceptions but overall they’re largely regular though super commited to religion.

You will find social inequalities a lot more common a motivation. Anyway a huge point you’re missing is that fundamentalism can be a response to poverty or abuses, because one produces the other doesn’t negate the effect.

Fundamentalism is a real thing, if people become fundamentalist over a materialistic fight, you can’t for the sake of your arguement surgically remove religion and say it plays a secondary role.

you can’t cut out cause/effect and DENY the effect of fundamentalism because it can be CAUSED by other factors like social injustice. THERES moderates in the same situations.

10

This isn’t about Islam, though I guess it might have been, since I’m not exactly sure what the religion was. In Albania some years ago a bunch of kids, like 40, hung themselves because they were told by some sparkling new religious idea that they would come back to life if they killed themselves at that particular day. The point is that religion in of itself when internalized and believed is sufficient motivation to get people to do terrible things. Yes, economic conditions will do the same but it seems like a blurring of waters when some of you say that religion ought to be absolved of responsibility and the economic situation ought to be blamed for everything, or for the most part. A horny street beggar recruited by al qaida and convinced to strap dynamite to himself probably wouldn’t have gone through with it if he were rich, but then again, he wouldn’t have gone through with it if it wasn’t for the promises of glory in this life and a lot of tang in the afterlife either. If Islam didn’t exist would people still blow themselves and others up? Probably. Does this mean that Islam is faultless? No.

11

Where? I didn’t see any statistics. In terms of suicide bombers, they are usually quite poor, see the studies I linked in the debate with Dorky. In terms of ‘educated above the poverty line’, that is a misleading statement, since the Madrassas that suicide bombers come from are education centers . . .

I’m not missing that point, I’ve explicitly stated it several times. What did you think I meant when, in your thread in psychology, I said:

“As for fundamentalism, the trick with that is that fundamentalism is a recent phenomenon. It is a reaction to and a rejection of various iterations of the project of modernity. But look at where fundamentalism prospers: those areas that have been left behind as the project has marched on. Isn’t that just the haves and the have-nots continuing their struggle?”

In terms of fundamentalism producing poverty and abuses, I’m pretty skeptical. After all, if you fix the problem of poverty, you fix the problem of violence. So how can fundamentalism be involved at all?

I’m not surgically removing it, I’m saying it is an epiphenomenon that people devote too much energy to.

I haven’t seen a case made for the cause/effect relationship, just a lot of assertions. That is my problem! Sure, there are moderates in the same situation, like anything else individual degrees of religiosity fall along a Gaussian curve relative to the society being examined. So what if there are moderates?

Since we are here, I may as well address what you said in the other thread as well:

Why? That point hasn’t been demonstrated. I don’t see religion as unique at all, I see it as being very similar to a wide variety of other things, many of which I’ve outlined in this thread, that thread, and the debate itself!

Let’s examine these examples line by line:

O, Canada . . .

My Country tis of thee . . .

Arise ye workers from your slumbers . . .

Varsity, Varsity, U-ra-ra Wisconsin . . .

I’m tired and I wanna go home/I’m tired and I wanna go to bed/I had a little drink about an hour ago/And it went straight to my head.

Yeah, nobody chants outside of religion

You mean like people working so they can afford a car so they can get to work from their house that they work to pay for? If that is too extreme for you, consider all the many scams and get-rich quick schemes people are involved in. Or time spent earing a post-graduate degree in an esoteric field. Plenty examples of people offering costly sacrifices to things that ultimately aren’t real, or at least not real in the conventional sense.

Which is why the atheist Viet Cong regularly employed suicide bombers. Why Japanese Kamikaze pilots blew themselves up out of duty rather than zeal.

Heck, in WWI soldiers from all countries charged trenches armed with machine guns.

That is every bit as suicidal as strapping a bomb to one’s self, and a great deal less effective.

So specific religious groups from specific in-groups. Sure, so what? I’d call that sentence redundant.

12

Go read “Mishandling suicide terrorism” and or “sacred barriers to conflict resolution” by Scott Atran etc

Anyone who wants overwhelming evidence Xun is wrong theres dozens of articles here:

sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/relev … _terrorism

suicide bombers are usually middle class and well educated, poverty is not common.

  • Scott Atran
  • Scott Atran, - mishandling suicide terrorism

Theres a lot of articles at that site that provide endless evidence Xunian is wrong.

Read some Xunian, you want the evidence every article there provides more and more. Atran has spent his life studying suicide terrorism, personally dealing with them himself. He provides endless data. Go read.

13
  • Scott Atran (on suicide terrorism).
  • Scott Atran (commentary on trying to stop suicide terrorism through reducing poverty)

Yeah poverty isn’t largely linked with suicide bombing, fundamentalism is, you artificially separate religion from conflicts for some reason not because reality reflects what you’re claiming.

Go read those articles, sacred values put a wrench in conflict resolution because resource allocation isn’t enough. On top of everything else.

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  • Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict. - Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran, Douglas Medin and Khalil Shikaki

So yeah it plays a role in the middle east, read the articles and tell me it doesn’t.

15

Saying “people” are the problem is not only vague to the utmost extreme, it leads us absolutely nowhere. Again, it paints pictures with such a broad stroke as to make it unintelligible. People have beliefs, and these beliefs directly influence their actions. People are also animals, so we are dealing with unconscious motives, evolutionary instincts, etc. The issue is far more complicated than saying the problem is “people”, and we need to recognize it as such if we’re going to even begin discussing the issue in a constructive and intelligent manner.

You’re right that people aren’t that different from one another. We’re all animals, and we’re all of the same species. I think in that regard, it’s safe to say many of our actions are going to be an obvious reflection of our origins.

But you’re arguing somewhat of a straw man here. I’ve agreed many times that violence itself isn’t a function of religion. Violence existed before we were even homo sapien sapiens, and continues to exist in the animal world, where obviously religious beliefs don’t exist. So I’m not saying “religion causes violence.” But I am saying that religious beliefs can not only cause people who would normally be non-violent to commit violent acts, but will also encourage people who are already more prone to commit violent acts, due to economic circumstance, to do so, and to do so in ways that are an expression of their beliefs.

My question is, are those expressions of violence independent of belief? Does poverty create the desire to mutilate a female’s genitals, or is due to beliefs about sexuality? Was foot-binding a product of poverty, or a product of beliefs and perceptions of beauty?

I don’t know why I said that, because again, I agree that poverty correlates with violence. So disregard my point about America’s GDP.

As I understand your argument, however, the purpose of suicide bombing is to inflict as much damage to the opposing side as possible. This is a murky area, however, because a lot of these suicide bombers are blowing up churches, not people.

Hey man, I hate to tell you this, but they actually do sit around and talk about how grand it is going to be when they set off that bomb, and are rewarded richly in heaven.

Again, sorry to burst your bubble, but I’ve seen video of a show on an Arab network, like a talk show setting, where a father is talking about how he has taught his young child about how grandiose heaven will be if he dies a martyr. They then interview the child, who continues to regurgitate the information that his father had taught him. I guess you wouldn’t get it unless you’ve seen it, but I’m sure a simple google search could provide some examples.

Xunzian, the problem you are having, and will continue to have, is that there are extensive examples of violent acts that are committed by folks who are well educated and economically sound, that they attribute solely to religious belief. The problem here is that if religious belief can cause somebody who isn’t poor, or stupid, to commit atrocities, it makes it that much more difficult to show that it has little or no role to play in other poorer parts of the world. It is shown that religious belief can directly influence such actions without any kind of economic or educational influences. Why stop, then, when we reach others simply because they are poor?

16

Suicide bombers usually aren’t poor suggesting such only displays acceptance of an American or first world myth, social inequalities do play a role and suicide bombing IS a tactical decision, still done almost entirely by religious fundamentalists though. Motivated by religion.

17

Dorkey

I think you missed my point there mate.

Xun

I’m not sure I can agree with this… I mean, I don’t think it’s like blaming a flag. When a soldier shoots another soldier in war, who’s to blame? the country? the individual soldier? Surely it’s a complicated mix of allot of things that lead to the event… but in the end that soldier was willing to do what he did not primarily for himself or because he needed money and had to join the army or some such. It’d be because he was a member of a group at war with another group. Muslims might not be a country, but they are a “people” just the same and they can be rallied into an army just the same. Like any other army they would fight for what their “people” stand for or need… in the case of muslims it’s not just a political ideology or financial security but a religious agenda as well. As for what drives them to join the “army” in the first place, that can be a whole assortment of things… not very different from what makes anyone else join an army.

We can debate what it means to be a muslim… but that’s like debating what it means to be an american… or german… in the end the only thing it really boils down to is loyalty towards a tribe or group of people you consider to be your own, because they share some quality that defines them as belonging to that group. It just so happens that in the case of muslims belief in the truth of the Koran is a required quality, and so among themselves it’s teachings play a vital role in politics. Whatever you do, or whatever you want, as a muslims, you have to be able to square away with what the koran teaches… or else risk being seen as a heretic and expelled from the group.

Now i’ll gladly admit that allot of the Koran is open for interpretation and can be viewed in many ways… but far less so than say the bible… the Koran is very very thorough by comparison and quite explicit in it’s language. I say this because I think it’s important to understand that the muslims on TV saying that the koran does not teach people to be violent, are strictly speaking “wrong”… If you were to take that moderate guy and sit his ass down in a room full of muslims along with an equally bright fundamentalist and see which one comes out on top… I would bet that the fundamentalist wins the crowd. He just has that much more support for his position in the Koran. and among themselves that’d be the natural authority.

18

MadMan, thank you for the clarification.

19

I can explain. People are hard-wired for aggression. This causes them to respond to external threats with hostility that escalates to the point of overwheming the source of the threat. People are genetically predisposed to partition others into friends and enemies. {This website even has a convenient friends or foes mechanism for that purpose.}

Religious preferences are just one of the many differences that determine which group one is placed in. Politics, ethnicity, race, culture, class, nation, and region, age, sex differences and many others can influence ingroup/outgroup selection every bit as much as religion.

People inherit gentically based rules that predispose them to respond to differences with aggression.These rules were selected for over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. The rules conferred biological advantage on those who lived by them. People are not likely to evolve away from these rules anytime soon.

That’s what I meant when I said people are the problem. The rules for aggressive reactions are part of human nature. They are the primary cause of violent conflict whenever and wherever it occurs.

20

People are the problem but you can’t seperate religion from them and talking about “if we didn’t ahve religion we’d fight over something else” is pointless. Yes we’d fight over something else, but that doesn’t change the fact that religion exacerbates what we do fight over now.

  • Scott Atran - “genesis of suicide” terrorism.

short section of an Atran interview:

San Miguel: “So the stereotype has been so far of a poor, uneducated, somebody who is easily manipulated kind of extremist as fitting the profile of a suicide bomber.
That’s not what you found, is it?”

Atran: “No. In fact, they’re as educated and economically well-off and psychologically stable as their surrounding populations, if not more so.”

Atran: “Well, the strategy to undermine terrorism by educating or elevating the economic conditions of the populations from which the bombers spring from, as president Bush proposed in monterey last year, is not a very promising strategy.”

  • Atran

you’re wrong about suicide bombers being usually poor Xunian, you might be right about what causes warfare (economic, inequalities) but what you don’t admit is that the solution or resolution to these fights is never entirely material, and the suggestion of material incentives to end a conflict in which sacred or religious beliefs are a part can INCREASE violence. (even when the conflict was areligious to begin with)

It takes a special kind of rose-tinted glasses to come to the conclusions you have.