Reason vs. Religion

The Recent Nightclub Bombings in Bali Illustrate Just What the "War on Terror" Is Really About

On the night of Saturday, October 12--the second anniversary of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a year, month, and day after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and mere days after terrorist attacks in Yemen, Kuwait, and the Philippines--two car bombs detonated outside neighboring nightclubs on the island of Bali, triggering a third explosive planted inside, and killing nearly 200 people (the majority of whom were Australian tourists), injuring several others, and redirecting the focus of the war against terror to Indonesia.

Also on the night of Saturday, October 12, the following bands and DJs were playing and spinning at several of Seattle's rock and dance clubs from Re-bar to Rock Bottom: FCS North, Sing-Sing, DJ Greasy, Michiko, Super Furry Animals, Bill Frisell Quintet, the Vells, the Capillaries, the Swains, DJ Che, Redneck Girlfriend, Grunge, Violent Femmes, the Bangs, Better Than Ezra, the Briefs, Tami Hart, the Spitfires, Tullycraft, B-Mello, Cobra High, Randy Schlager, Bobby O, Venus Hum, MC Queen Lucky, Evan Blackstone, and the RC5, among many, many others.

This short list, taken semi-randomly from the pages of The Stranger's music calendar, is designed to illustrate a point that is both facile and essential to reckoning the effects of the Bali bombings. Many of you were at these shows, dancing, smoking, drinking, talking, flirting, kissing, groping, and presumably enjoying yourselves, much like the 180-plus tourists and revelers killed at the Sari Club and Paddy's Irish Pub in Bali. Though no group has come forward to claim responsibility for the bombings, they were almost certainly the work of Muslim radicals launching the latest volley in the war against apostasy.

Whether the attacks turn out to have been the work of al Qaeda or one of the like-purposed, loosely connected, multicellular organizations that function in the region--groups like the Jemaah Islamiyah (an umbrella network that seeks a single Islamic state comprising Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore), the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council (led by the nefarious Abu Bakar Bashir), Laskar Jihad (which waged holy war on Christians in the Spice Islands before mysteriously disbanding two weeks ago), or the Islam Defenders Front (which makes frequent "sweeps" of bars and nightclubs, attacking non-Muslims, and violently guarding against "prostitution and other bad things")--will ultimately prove to be of little consequence. What matters is that the forces of Islamic fascism have struck again, in a characteristically cowardly, murderous, and yes, blasphemous fashion that must register as an affront to every living human with even a passing interest in freedom.

The facile part: It could have happened here, at any club in Seattle. It's a ludicrous thought, of course--at least as ludicrous as the thought of shutting the Space Needle down on New Year's Eve because some crazy terrorist was arrested at the Canadian border--but that doesn't make it any less true. That doesn't mean we should be looking over our shoulders and under our chairs every time we go to a show. It simply means that it could happen anywhere, because anywhere is exactly where rabid Islamists can find evidence of blasphemy against their precious, imaginary god.

Which brings us to the essential part: The Bali bombings were not an attack against Bali; they were an attack against humankind. In all the jawflap about the whys and wherefores of the multiple conflicts currently dotting our collective radar screen--the war against terror, the war on Iraq, the coming holy war, et al.--it seems worth restating (at the risk of sounding pious) that the war against basic human liberty, waged not by us but on us, is at the heart of the matter. Discourse has justifiably, necessarily turned to complexities of strategy, diplomacy, and consequences. The moral truth, however, remains agonizingly basic. We are still dealing with a small but indefatigable contingent of radicalized, militant absolutists who believe that every living being is accountable to the stricture of Shari'a, under penalty of death. As Salman Rushdie wrote, in an oft-cited Washington Post editorial, the fundamentalist faction is against, "to offer a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." If these were fictional villains, you'd call them hyperbolic, not believable. But they aren't fictional. Their code would be laughable if it weren't so aggressively despicable.

As headlines about Bali cross-fade into news of North Korean nukes, and there are further debates about the finer points of Iraqi de- and restabilization, it's crucial to remember that there is, in fact, a very real enemy, with a very real will, and the very real power of delusional self-righteousness. How to remember? Consider the scene of the attacks (as reported by various Australian and European news sources):

It's a typical hot, sweaty, drunken, lascivious Saturday night. People, primarily young Aussie tourists from Melbourne, Geelong, Perth, and Adelaide, are crammed into the clubs, mixing it up, spilling out into the street. Rock band noises mix with techno music and innumerable voices as latecomers clamor to squeeze inside. Just after 11:00 p.m., a car bomb explodes outside of Paddy's, followed a few seconds later by a second blast that smashes the façade of the Sari Club and leaves a hole in the street a meter deep and 10 meters across. The second bomb is strong enough to damage buildings miles away. All at once, everything's on fire. People are incinerated. Cars go up in flames. Televisions explode. Ceilings collapse, trapping those still inside. Screams. Blistered, charred flesh. Disembodied limbs. Mangled bodies. Victims covered in blood. Inferno.

Now transpose this horrible, fiery mass murder from the seedy, alien lushness of Bali to, say, Pioneer Square, where clubs and bars are lined up in the same teeming proximity as the Sari and Paddy's in the "raunchy" Jalan Legian district, the busiest strip of nightlife in Kuta Beach. Imagine a car blowing up outside the Central Saloon and another, across the street at the New Orleans. Again, it seems too simple an equation, but the fact remains that the victims were not targeted at random, or for merely political purposes. They were doing exactly what any of us might be doing on any night of the week: exercising a liberty so deeply offensive to religious believers as to constitute blasphemy. And the punishment for blasphemy is death.

There is an ongoing lie in the official governmental position on the war against terror, which bends over backwards to assure us that, in the words of our president, "we don't view this as a war of religion in any way, shape, or form." Clearly, in every sense, this is a war of religion, whether it's declared as such or not. And if it isn't, then it certainly should be. Not a war of one religion against another, but of reason against religion--against any belief system that takes its mandate from an invisible spiritual entity and endows its followers with the right to murder or subjugate anyone who fails to come to the same conclusion. This is the war our enemies are fighting. To pretend we're fighting any other--or worse, that this war is somehow not worth fighting, on all fronts--is to dishonor the innocent dead.

Aquinas never made that distinction -- you did. Aquinas was an Aristotelian rationalist, blending faith and reason into a theology that worked for him. I am not a Catholic, so I don't really care about official Church doctrine, but your claim that everything in religion rests on faith is just another bogus and tiresome argument trotted out by self-styled 'rationalists' to discredit anything that threatens to exlode the narrow parameters of their universe, including religion.

Just as not every scientific claim is true, so not every claim made in the name of religion ought to be passively accepted. God can be proven through experience, just as any scientific claim needs to be verified through experience, not theoretical argument. My faith is based in experience, personal experiences that cannot be argued away by skeptical pooh-poohing. But if you don't try to experience God for yourself, then you are like the man who refuses to look through the telescope to see the stars and the infinite universe stretching out beyond what ordinary human experience would suggest. Why dogmatically limit yourself to what limited human reason suggests, when it comes to God and religion? If you meditate, pray and keep ever-mindful of God, He will provide you with answers. Any religious conviction based on passive acceptance of what someone else has told you is not faith, but dogma. And mere logic, without experience, is capable of proving nothing beyond tautological statements.

Aquinas never made that distinction -- you did.

Thanks, but I don't have many original ideas.

Why dogmatically limit yourself to what limited human reason suggests, when it comes to God and religion?

Why do you simultaneously argue that reason/religion is a false dichotomy AND that religion uses a method that is beyond the limits of ("human") reason?

That you admit your religion might be wrong, apparently subject to some potential falsifiability criterion, is not what I expected from you. Your doubt is the essence of the scientific method. That doubt however deprives you of the very comfort that the certainty of faith grants the psyche.

In Him we Breathe, move, and have our being.

Well I understand this point anyway. Every existing substance (whether compound or simple) is ultimately reducible to its essence (what a thing is) and being (act of existence).* From this we can see that being does not properly belong to the essence of a thing. Things do not exist by nature. Things only participate in existence. This helps explain how God can be transcendent; how He can be in things while not being the things themselves.

_________________________________________________
For example, I know the "whatness" of my dog, even though he is now dead. My dog no longer exists, but his "whatness" is known to me now; his "whatness" (essence) exists now. Therefore, being does not properly belong to the nature of my dog.

Now, on the word ’Logos’ from John Robbins at the Trinity Foundation: ...

Aside from the religious tone of this statement I agree with everything here in terms of the absolute nature of logic for man. This is that ‘old time religion’ that Christianity had evolved into (sorry, couldn’t think of a better word) before Calvin destroyed it with the insistence that faith take precedence over reason, and that contaminates most of modern day Christian thought.

Anyone familiar with the Trinity Foundation would think from the comment above that the paragraph you quoted was the only thing you’ve ever read by John Robbins.

What Is Faith? This is an introduction to the book Faith and Saving Faith. An excerpt:

In the pages that follow [in Faith and Saving Faith], Dr. Clark defends the view that faith is assent to a proposition, and that saving faith is assent to propositions found in the Bible. Saving faith is neither an indescribable encounter with a divine person, nor heart knowledge as opposed to head knowledge. According to the author of Hebrews, those who come to God must believe at least two propositions: that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Mindless encounters and meaningless relationships are not saving faith. Truth is propositional, and one is saved and sanctified only through believing true statements. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Why Study Logic? This introduction to a textbook on logic is where the quote from John Robbins on the word ’Logos’ can be found. It is the third to last paragraph. Here is a link about the textbook itself: Logic.

If you can quote John Robbins the way you did, and then trash Calvinism, you may as well quote Richard Feynman, say you agree with it except for the relativistic tone of it, and then say this is that ‘old time religion’ that physics had evolved into before Einstein destroyed it. And you don’t even have to agree with Calvinism to recognize it.

Betty Boop: Here is a book for you if you are not already aware of it: The Johannine Logos.

PatrickHenry: One for you: Without A Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her System. Objectivism taken to the woodshed and decapitated with its own ax.

If you want me to I will drag you through the cognitive process by which we epistemologically come to define such abstractions such as truth, beauty and goodness. Just because they are abstractions doesn't mean they aren't ultimately rooted in experience.

This is central to this discussion. If people don't understand the process of abstraction, and how higher levels of abstraction encompass lower level abstractions, and that the process can go on indefinitely, then they quickly get lost. Just as you have here. Justice is a fairly high level abstract concept but that doesn't mean the word isn't ultimately rooted in actions taken, or to be taken by men, that we know about because we experience those actions.

Because they are rooted in experience, they aren't superstitions.

Roll it out. I suspect it’s the empirical/objectivist wolf in sheep’s clothing. Surprise me.

All physical astronomy can do is explain past orbital behaviors, It cannot inform as to future actions. It cannot safely guide us to land on the moon, since that's never been done before.

Your analogy is distinguishable in several ways from the case at hand, not the least of which is that the planets in their orbits obey the laws of physics. You want to have morality as nothing but physics, yet we know that you can disobey the moral law. You want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to say that at that the same time you can both obey and disobey the laws of physics.

The key question is, why SHOULD I be moral tomorrow? Morality has nothing to do with predicting physical behavior in a merely descriptive sense. It has to do with what we ought or ought not do, in a prescriptive way. All evolutionary theory can do is attempt to expain how we got to where we are, not how we ought to act in the future. The problem is, for the umpteenth time, that if the moral obligation precedes the physical behavior, then it cannot at the same time BE the physical behavior. Your astronomy analogy actually illustrates the dilemna, as opposed to answering it.

Cordially,

Re your # 2...When a religion declares a political agenda as a fundamental tenet, as does Islam, then it can no longer claim righteousness. ....YES and it cannot claim itself as a religion either.

I lived among these people in North Africa and can assure you that basic Islam is NOT...repeat not truly a religion in the accepted, western sense! It is instead a political system masking as a religion utilizing threat and terror to accomplish the will and insure the power of it's leadership..

It is a true danger to civilized peiople everywhere as the Imans and Mullahs in control insure their personal wellfare on the backs of the largely uneducated, ignorant masses.....and they allow only a select few to become educated and enter their elevated ranks.

No, it's not a contradiction in terms. "Assertion" means one thing, "proof" means another. They in no way contradict.

You didn't understand what I meant here. But that's ok, this conversation is going nowhere fast.

That's incorrect. Use a dictionary when making claims about definitions.

I have a 10lbs unabridged monster of a dictionary. All definitions of 'supernatural' are a ring of circular definitions relying upon other words that ultimately rely upon the 'supernatural' for their definition in turn. It is a floating abstraction with no 'real' meaning and is a fantasy term that doesn't signify any 'real' any more than the word Centaur denotes anything 'real.'

Again, it's a matter of definition. There are people who claim to be witches and practice rituals with the intent to acquire supernatural powers, regardless of how successful they are.

Hey, I deal with a myriad of forms of irrationality every day. That doesn't mean any of it is valid or real. Just because this is what these people believe doesn't mean I have to buy into it any more than I have to pet the local shizoids invisible dog. Just because other people are insane doesn't mean I have to join them in that insanity.

If they are guilty of being witches is it OK to burn them by your standards?

Well, we used to try to treat insane people in mental institutions but nowadays we just let them roam the streets. But by and large no, you don't burn crazy people because they are crazy.

Maybe I'm dense. Who were you implying were going to protest if it wasn't proponents of Christian Scripture?

Ok, now I understand. Sometimes this rabbit hole does get a little much, tho.

Since I said, 'Goodness is taking those actions that will result in enhancing one's life' and altruism, an unselfish concern for the welfare of others, is usually how 'goodness' is defined by Christianity, I usually do get 'howls of protest' by Christians when I define goodness in the way that I did.

So, I'm not sure if you not disputing my definition, or simply saying that 'howls of protest' would be unChristianlike behaviour. If it is the latter then I guess the fault is mine for the overly colorful characterization. I suppose I should have said, 'I know you will disagree' instead, but if I am going to have to write in such a boring fashion at every turn because someone might misunderstand I'll fall asleep at the keyboard and all there will be will be adkljja;lkdjjfla.

Then again, a lot of people might think that would be better than what I do write.

Anyone familiar with the Trinity Foundation would think from the comment above that the paragraph you quoted was the only thing you’ve ever read by John Robbins.

It was the only thing that I found interesting and pertinent for this discussion. I only used that because it was handy and had just the perfect explanation of the root of the meaning of the word 'Logos' since this was being tossed in my face repeatedly as some sort of magic talisman.

That the world owes a debt to St. Thomas Aquinas for saving logic from the trash heap of history in his attempts to logically prove the existence of God cannot be denied. Some of the finest logicians I have ever run across have been Christian Apologists, even, sometimes especially, today. But that doesn't mean anything more than that they have studied logic in an effort to bolster their position.

That isn't the case for most of these debates and doesn't addresses the problem of taking reality as your founding premise as opposed to taking Scripture as your founding premise for creating a world view. The thread is Reason vs Religion and this is exactly the point. That everything Christians believe follows logically from taking Scriptures as the basis for a world view is absolutely correct. The problem is, is there any basis in 'reality' for taking those writing as that founding premise?

And at that point you get to the problem of finding any evidence at all for something that is defined has having 'created' reality but is not part of it, but is something entirely separate. So how are you going to find any evidence? One has to presuppose the existence of that very thing before one can attribute any such 'evidence' as deriving from that source. This is why I keep boring everybody to tears with Begging the Question, Begging the Question.

The premise of the existence of God is smuggled into the very construction of 'this is evidence of the existence of God.' This is just a fancy way of saying, 'it couldn't happen any other way.' Oh, why not? How do you know it couldn't happen any other way? This is just another presupposition. This is just another assumed premise. Since it is assuming the negative it cannot be disproven or shown to be false, but it is faulty reasoning.

Using this kind of reasoning one can assert and justify anything. And that being the case then it applies equally well to Hinduism, and Islam and every other belief system that has ever been. Then it is simply, it is this way because this is what I believe. But it isn't science and it isn't reason and it isn't based upon anything other than, this is what I believe. And that's just fine. Just don't try to pretend it is anything else, anything more. This is all it is.

You didn't understand what I meant here.

I understand what you wrote and what you wrote was incorrect. What occurred was that you failed to explain what you meant.

I have a 10lbs unabridged monster of a dictionary.

You are either not understanding what you're reading or you were cheated when you bought the dictionary. Here's a real simple definition for "supernatural" from Merriam-Webster Online:

1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)

There is no circular logic here. You may believe the supernatural is not "real." But the word "isn't real by definition."

I take it you don't believe in the supernatural. Do believe only that the only things that exist are those that can be quantified?

But by and large no, you don't burn crazy people because they are crazy.

And to get to my original point, why do you believe it is wrong to burn crazy people because they are crazy?

Well I understand this point anyway. Every existing substance (whether compound or simple) is ultimately reducible to its essence (what a thing is) and being (act of existence)

I overlooked this until perusing the thread this morning (something I don't do enough - I missed that whole Prometheus discussion. That was beautiful)

Anyway, you mean this in exactly the opposite way that I do. I am not a reductionist, just the opposite. I don't think you explain the nature of a thing by reducing it down to essence and being, it is the entirety of a thing as a whole. You cannot separate something's essence from its existence, that's just Platonism. What I was referring to was the entire Universe, taken as a Whole. The Big Picture.

From this we can see that being does not properly belong to the essence of a thing. Things do not exist by nature. Things only participate in existence. This helps explain how God can be transcendent; how He can be in things while not being the things themselves.

There is no separation between being and essence. The statement 'things do not exist by nature' has no meaning for me. To me, that is a contradiction in terms. Doesn't explain much for me in that regard.

For example, I know the "whatness" of my dog, even though he is now dead. My dog no longer exists, but his "whatness" is known to me now; his "whatness" (essence) exists now. Therefore, being does not properly belong to the nature of my dog.

Naw, you've just reified your concept and memory of your dog into a 'whatness.' (Who was it that started that, Martin Buber? I forget now. Isness, whatness. all that jazz)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.