Radical Islam

[bush_cheney2004]

My intention is not only to highlight possible reasons for the anger that is felt in some circles for the west. It is also to show that the west cannot assume to have gold standard morals enabling 'us' to both look so poorly on other people and punish them for doing things that 'we' have done in the past... and perhaps are still doing. We bring too many big rocks into our lovely glass house.

But you see, this game does not require a moral umpire....there is only the very practical matter of power....those who have it...and those who want it. Leave your morals at home.

No, citizens of those countries do not blow themselves up. But people of those countries had to endure some terrible atrocities... such as the Vietcong, to whom you refer. Although, it was the innocent people of Laos that paid the biggest price, isn't it? Sure people wanted to chase those who were firing weapons at them. But the US, rather than killing only those responsible, killed everyone around... and somehow felt justified??? Disgusting.

Yes....it was the same "morality" used for strategic bombing during WW2. Or perhaps you are prepared to be consistent and declare that Germany and Japan should not have been bombed?

THAT is my main point. Look in the mirror before you judge others.

OK....then can we bomb them?

[wulf42]

I sympathize with your thoughts... I really do. I am a strong atheist myself and am furiously anti-religion. I agree that if people would realize that we're better off as a species without it... we'd be better off.

But I have to say, you can't make claims like you have... in this post and past ones. I am a science teacher and have worked in world class research facilities at the University of Toronto under some world renowned scientists, so I have a good understanding of what science is and what it isn't. There could be no scientific evidence that refutes an afterlife. It's just not something that people can evaluate using scientific tools (not equipment, the mode of inquiry). So you can't make claims that scientific research suggests that when we die, we die. I believe that, but also know that it's not something that is 'testable'.

On that note, I have a feeling that your posts about what 'radical islamists' are all about, why they do what they do, how many of them there are, etc. are as carefully thought out as the one above. I tried to point out to you that the information available out there must be scrutinized most carefully. I gave you examples in history which illustrate the dishonesty of government agents and media outlets. I gave you examples in history that, at least attempt to, explain why 'radical islamists' do what they do... the whole Isreali occupation thing... which, in itself is information that must be scrutinized.

What you are doing is stating beliefs that are presumably based on shady information. Those beliefs don't hold well to logic and if acted upon can lead to serious consequences... so you had BETTER be sure of what you're advocating for. Dude, just read some more. Find out as much information as you can with the realization that you may very well NEVER know the answers that you're looking for. And because of that, you can't act on suspicion. Otherwise, you could be a murderer rather than a defender. Or... a terrorist rather than a freedom fighter.

My thoughts on religion are just my own opinion.........believe me i am not in any hurry to find out if i am right or not.....lol........There is actually a scientific 3 year study underway i believe in Britain in an attempt to find out what happens at the time of death involving people who have had near death experiences... i read about it in the news not to long ago.................but as far as terrorism goes... the USA

will most certainly retaliate against states that harbour and train terrorists in the event of a Nuke or Biological attack...it has to! the American people would demand it.........i know the subject about the roots of terrorism are extremely complicated and go back many years and most likely would be hard for most people in the west to understand............i look at from the point of view that i am sure many in the west do and that is i want my Government to protect us from these creatures.....i am not really concerned about why they do what they do ...........only that if these animals keep hitting us we have to hit back hard..........really hard!..........until 9/11 i wasn't at all concerned with the middle east or what was happening over there........maybe that sounds uncaring but hey i have my own problems in life..........but after what they did in New York and with Canada's involvement in Afghanistan i know there is a real good chance these people will hit us here.....i do not advocate a pre-emptive strike............but God forbid they hit us with a Nuke or Biological attack...then in that case i certainly believe the gloves should come off against the states who harbour and train these animals..........i think inventing the Nuclear Weapon was probably the dumbest thing the human race has ever done.......but at the same time it has kept an uneasy peace with Russia since the end of WW2...maybe the threat alone to use Nuclear power against states the sponsor terrorism might get them to crack down on these groups...........believe me if there is a way to solve all this terrorist nonsense peacefully then i would be the first in line to give my support..but from interviews that i have seen on tv with Al-Qaeda they don't want to talk...they want us in the West to accept Islam or else......it is no different when the Nazi's tried to push their ideology on the rest of the world they had to be stopped then...and radical Islamic extremism has to be stopped now....i certainly respect your views and i don't support violence anymore than you do but sometimes you are forced to fight back!

Edited October 13, 2008 by wulf42

[Kitch]

But you see, this game does not require a moral umpire....there is only the very practical matter of power....those who have it...and those who want it. Leave your morals at home.

Yes....it was the same "morality" used for strategic bombing during WW2. Or perhaps you are prepared to be consistent and declare that Germany and Japan should not have been bombed?

OK....then can we bomb them?

I can't give an opinion on WWII events... I wasn't aware (I probably should be) that similar tactics were used.

But morals should never be left at home. I have no desire to be powerful, particularly to have power over anybody else. I want the power to live my life the way I see fit, but that doesn't mean that I need to impose any of my beliefs on others. If somebody else tries to do that to me, then I'll do what's warranted to prevent that and defend my own life. But there is nothing that you could say, in my mind, that could justify the types of things that were done in Vietnam (Laos/Cambodia), Guatemala, Nicaragua OR what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan daily (meaning suicide bombing).

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not advocating for the actions of people who blow themselves up in order to kill others. Killing is killing. But the west is in no position to look down on people who do such things by calling them creatures. WE'RE creatures in their eyes... and maybe they're not wrong!

I don't have answers as to how this issue can be resolved. I just know what I believe is wrong.

[Kitch]

My thoughts on religion are just my own opinion.........believe me i am not in any hurry to find out if i am right or not.....lol........There is actually a scientific 3 year study underway i believe in Britain in an attempt to find out what happens at the time of death involving people who have had near death experiences... i read about it in the news not to long ago.................but as far as terrorism goes... the USA

will most certainly retaliate against states that harbour and train terrorists in the event of a Nuke or Biological attack...it has to! the American people would demand it.........i know the subject about the roots of terrorism are extremely complicated and go back many years and most likely would be hard for most people in the west to understand............i look at from the point of view that i am sure many in the west do and that is i want my Government to protect us from these creatures.....i am not really concerned about why they do what they do ...........only that if these animals keep hitting us we have to hit back hard..........really hard!..........until 9/11 i wasn't at all concerned with the middle east or what was happening over there........maybe that sounds uncaring but hey i have my own problems in life..........but after what they did in New York and with Canada's involvement in Afghanistan i know there is a real good chance these people will hit us here.....i do not advocate a pre-emptive strike............but God forbid they hit us with a Nuke or Biological attack...then in that case i certainly believe the gloves should come off against the states who harbour and train these animals..........i think inventing the Nuclear Weapon was probably the dumbest thing the human race has ever done.......but at the same time it has kept an uneasy peace with Russia since the end of WW2...maybe the threat alone to use Nuclear power against states the sponsor terrorism might get them to crack down on these groups...........believe me if there is a way to solve all this terrorist nonsense peacefully then i would be the first in line to give my support..but from interviews that i have seen on tv with Al-Qaeda they don't want to talk...they want us in the West to accept Islam or else......it is no different when the Nazi's tried to push their ideology on the rest of the world they had to be stopped then...and radical Islamic extremism has to be stopped now....i certainly respect your views and i don't support violence anymore than you do but sometimes you are forced to fight back!

I don't want to sound like I'm patronizing you... I really don't intend to. But could you give me a citation to that research you referred to? It will make or break my point... meaning after I read the info you provide.

[wulf42]

I don't want to sound like I'm patronizing you... I really don't intend to. But could you give me a citation to that research you referred to? It will make or break my point... meaning after I read the info you provide.

Here is the article i was telling you about...it's quite interesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/18/2368340.htm

[bush_cheney2004]

I can't give an opinion on WWII events... I wasn't aware (I probably should be) that similar tactics were used.

OK....if WW2 is a bit too removed from your awareness, perhaps we can use more recent examples: Iraq (1991) or Kosovo (1999)...bombs to "protect human rights" (including non "Westerners")

But morals should never be left at home. I have no desire to be powerful, particularly to have power over anybody else. I want the power to live my life the way I see fit, but that doesn't mean that I need to impose any of my beliefs on others. If somebody else tries to do that to me, then I'll do what's warranted to prevent that and defend my own life.

That's fine and dandy, excepting the fact that the "power" to live your life as you see fit rests upon a foundation built by the very things you abhor....war, domination, cultural genocide, and ultimately....power. One can't expect the "immoral" game to stop once a cozy spot has been secured.

But there is nothing that you could say, in my mind, that could justify the types of things that were done in Vietnam (Laos/Cambodia), Guatemala, Nicaragua OR what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan daily (meaning suicide bombing).

Again, your moral criteria are out of place and context. "Things that were done" follow a long continuum that won't be interrupted because it offends specific sensibilities or moral underpinnings. Suidice bombings are not a new concept, nor are effective (and ineffective) countermeasures.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not advocating for the actions of people who blow themselves up in order to kill others. Killing is killing. But the west is in no position to look down on people who do such things by calling them creatures. WE'RE creatures in their eyes... and maybe they're not wrong!

Very well then...if such a moral determination is paramount, let there be much "killing" and "God" can sort them out. In the mean time, practical matters shall prevail, just as they always have.

I don't have answers as to how this issue can be resolved. I just know what I believe is wrong.

The issue will be resolved just as it has always been resolved....power with an acceptable level of misery all around.

[DogOnPorch]

Kitch: If somebody else tries to do that to me, then I'll do what's warranted to prevent that and defend my own life.

At what point would that be? Before or after they came for me?

--------------------------------------------

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

---Aldous Huxley

[WIP]

Here is the article i was telling you about...it's quite interesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/18/2368340.htm

There is no controversy regarding the fact that many people report near death experiences of floating out of the body -- the question is what the experience represents! The central feature of NDE's -- floating out of and above one's body can be artificially induced. About three years ago, Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke accidentally discovered that applying a mild electric current to the right angular gyrus area in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex's right hemisphere caused the patient to have an out of body experience.

Blanke's team realized they had found the area in our brain that generates our sense of embodiment, and that when it is shut down, we have no intuitive sense that our consciousness should be located inside the body. The OOBE phenomena was later shown to be capable of being created through simple illusion techniques designed to fool our visual processing system.

That should be enough to close the issue, but NDE believers insist that the experience happens to people who are clinically dead, and that's where it's good to get an opinion from a neurologist who has studied the phenomena and knows the limitations of detecting brainwaves with EKG machines. Dr. Stephen Novella points out a number of reasons why most people working in his field of neurology and neuroscience, do not believe that NDE's are paranormal events:

Neuroscientists are piecing together plausible explanations for each of the components of the NDE. The sensation of floating outside one’s body can be reliably induced by suppressing that part of the brain that makes us feel as if we possess our bodies. The experience is identical to that reported by those who have had an NDE. This experience can be replicated by drugs or magnetic stimulation. There are even reports (I have had one such patient) of people who have a typical NDE experience during seizures. The bright light can be explained as a function of hypoxia (relative lack of oxygen) either to the retina or the visual cortex. Any everything else is simply the culturally appropriate hallucinations of a hypoxic brain.

Critics of such explanation try to argue that during the experience the brain is not active, therefore the brain cannot be the source of the experiences. There are two problems with this argument. First, it has not been established that the brain is not sufficiently active to generate experiences. In all cases people survived the experience (by definition) to report what they remember. That means the brain did not go entirely without oxygen for very long or otherwise it would have been catastrophically damaged. During cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) the cardiac output is about 20-25% normal - enough to delay damage to tissues. So the brain is getting some oxygen. Not enough to be conscious, but enough to have some function - perhaps generate a dream-like hallucination or out-of-body experience.

Second, the argument assumes without justification that the memories reported by those who survive CPR and have an NDE were formed during the CPR or when they were unconscious. It is more likely that some or all of those memories formed when the person was waking up adn their sense of time is as distorted as all their brain function. Unlike in the movies, people do not wake up fully conscious and lucid after having their heart restarted. After minutes of CPR the brain has taken a hit due to the hypoxia. People typically wake from this event slowly - taking hours or even days, depending on the duration and quality of the CPR. They will necessarily pass through a phase where they are what is called encephalopathic (their brain is functioning but not well), which is a type of delirium. It is common to have bizarre thoughts and perceptions, hallucination, and illusions during this period.

When patients then fully wake up to report their experiences, all they have is their memories, which includes the memories of the transition period from unconscious, through a delirious period, and to fully conscious. They have no way of knowing when those memories formed.

[Kitch]

There is no controversy regarding the fact that many people report near death experiences of floating out of the body -- the question is what the experience represents! The central feature of NDE's -- floating out of and above one's body can be artificially induced. About three years ago, Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke accidentally discovered that applying a mild electric current to the right angular gyrus area in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex's right hemisphere caused the patient to have an out of body experience.

Blanke's team realized they had found the area in our brain that generates our sense of embodiment, and that when it is shut down, we have no intuitive sense that our consciousness should be located inside the body. The OOBE phenomena was later shown to be capable of being created through simple illusion techniques designed to fool our visual processing system.

That should be enough to close the issue, but NDE believers insist that the experience happens to people who are clinically dead, and that's where it's good to get an opinion from a neurologist who has studied the phenomena and knows the limitations of detecting brainwaves with EKG machines. Dr. Stephen Novella points out a number of reasons why most people working in his field of neurology and neuroscience, do not believe that NDE's are paranormal events:

I'd like to add to this, if I may.

The research that wulf42 discussed, from a scientific perspective, IF it can be considered science (which is another discussion), will not say anything about what happens after we die... when the research is complete. That's not its purpose, and if it is, then the researchers are mistaken.

Let's assume that people do and can have near death experiences during which they float to the top of the room. Let's even assume that this research confirms that. What does that say about what happens after we die? There are numerous explanations that could account for this. WIP gives one of those.

The point is that you can't believe everything you read. You read this article about near death experiences and took it as the truth. Perhaps you've read some other articles that formed your opinion about the nature of 'radical islam', the American response and anything else related which were as informative as this quasi-scientific article.

No offense intended. I do understand the point of view of the 'get them before they get us' crowd. I just disagree with the crowd.

[wulf42]

No offense intended. I do understand the point of view of the 'get them before they get us' crowd. I just disagree with the crowd.

No offense taken, that is why these forums exist..............i hope and i truly mean this.... that no attacks occur in the future and i believe that our involvement in Afghanistan is a good thing........i don't believe in the war in Iraq....that country was better off under Saddam than it is now....and as bad as Saddam was ...He and Al-Qaeda hated one another............the Americans would have been better off leaving Iraq alone but contained...but I guess President Bush had his own reasons for that mess................Afghanistan however is another matter.........as long as our troops are keeping Al-Qaeda and the Taliban pinned down in caves and by denying them training and planning for more attacks ...they are not attacking us here and this is very important .............i hope Al-Qaeda doesn't hit the West again for Our sake and the Middle East sake...if it does the reaction will be terrible....... especially if it is in France or the USA............and if were to happen to Israel.....well then the Middle East would instantly become glass ...............you don't mess with the Israeli's......look what they did to Lebanon just for kidnapping one soldier......they flattened it.

Edited October 15, 2008 by wulf42