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Author suggests that 9/11 murders were not evil, rather a difference in perspective
The Science of Good and Evil | 5/27 | Mike Thompson

Posted on 05/27/2004 5:38:42 AM PDT by mft112345

In his latest book, The Science of Good & Evil, Skeptic Magazine publisher Michael Shermer suggests that the 9/11 terrorist attacks might somehow be justifiable. He should issue a public apology for trying to minimize the evil of these actions and ignoring the human pain they caused. On page 81, Mr. Shermer writes: "September 11, 2001, comes to mind here. United States President George W. Bush described what happened that day as an act of pure evil. Yet millions of people around the world celebrate that day as a triumphant victory over what they perceive to be an evil American culture. What we are witnessing here is not a conceptual difference in understanding the true nature of evil. Nor is it simply a matter of who is in the right. It is, at least on one important level, a difference of perspective. To achieve true understanding and enlightenment it might help to understand what the other side was thinking."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; US: New York; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911; michaelshermer; oklahomacity; terrorism; timmcveigh; worldtradecenter
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Does the moral blameworthiness of the 9/11 murders really depend on the rise and fall of foreign public opinion polls measuring America's popularity?

Our jury system rests on the realization that the average reasonable person has the ability to objectively know that crimes such as rape, torture, and murder are evil rather than good. The crimes against humanity that took place on 9/11 are also evil in the eyes of God--despite Shermer's denial of the existence of any God above and beyond the mystical force of Darwinian evolution.

Regardless of the nationality or the delusions of a terrorist, the intentional mass murder of thousands of innocent civilians is wrong. Will listing every delusion held by Tim McVeigh ever make his crimes less vicious or bring his victims (whom McVeigh compared to anonymous Star Wars "storm troopers") back to life?

Mr. Shermer should be ashamed of defending terrorists who killed thousands of innocents in the name of God. Will any of us really move closer to what Mr. Shermer calls "enlightenment" if we join him in dismissing the 9/11 mass murders as a "difference of perspective"?

1 posted on 05/27/2004 5:38:51 AM PDT by mft112345
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To: mft112345

What a perfect description of Moral Equivalency


2 posted on 05/27/2004 5:40:41 AM PDT by RaceBannon (VOTE DEMOCRAT AND LEARN ARABIC FREE!!)
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To: mft112345

Link?


3 posted on 05/27/2004 5:42:21 AM PDT by Balding_Eagle (Liberalism is a mental disorder)
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To: mft112345


THE REAL DEAL

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS MURDERING AMERICANS AT A RATE OF 3000 INNOCENTS PER HOUR

Where is the outrage?? It is ONLY for the terrorists.

GOTTA HEAR THIS (911 in sound ~ 3 megabytes)

=====> (click here, or download with right mouse button)


4 posted on 05/27/2004 5:43:19 AM PDT by Diogenesis (We do what we are meant to do)
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To: mft112345

"He should issue a public apology for trying to minimize the evil of these actions and ignoring the human pain they caused."

WHY? An apology will not take away his insanity.


5 posted on 05/27/2004 5:46:06 AM PDT by Just mythoughts
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To: mft112345

Crazy.

Simply crazy.


6 posted on 05/27/2004 5:50:12 AM PDT by tiamat ("Just a Bronze-Age Gal, Trapped in a Techno-World!")
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To: mft112345

Shermer is an Occidental College historian of science (he has a recent book on Alfred Russel Wallace, who shares credit with Darwin for the theory of natural selection). But he also has written pop atheism books denying religion and the supernatural.


7 posted on 05/27/2004 5:54:15 AM PDT by megatherium
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To: mft112345
"To achieve true understanding and enlightenment it might help to understand what the other side was thinking."

Does this apply to the Nazis as well? And Tim McVeigh?

IDIOT.

8 posted on 05/27/2004 5:59:21 AM PDT by veronica (Sen. Robert Bryd has seen more hoods than Iraqi prisoners ever wore....)
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To: mft112345

I've never seen the moral relativism argumnet applied to an act so extreme and clear-cut before. Does Schermer use the same logic when discussing the Holocauset?


9 posted on 05/27/2004 6:02:02 AM PDT by BlazingArizona
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To: mft112345
It is, at least on one important level, a difference of perspective.

Then this guy should have no qualms about us nuking Damascus, Tehran, Pyongyang, Cairo, et. al.

This is just the hippy mantra "If It Feels Good, Do It" taken to its logical conclusion.

10 posted on 05/27/2004 6:02:02 AM PDT by randog (Everything works great 'til the current flows.)
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To: mft112345
Yet millions of people around the world celebrate that day as a triumphant victory over what they perceive to be an evil American culture.

Millions of Germans celebrated Hitler and millions of Japanese celebrated Tojo.

We will eradicate the evil fanaticism of Islam until the survivors beg us to kill them.

Is genocide evil?

Then how about civilizationcide?

11 posted on 05/27/2004 6:02:33 AM PDT by CROSSHIGHWAYMAN (I don't believe anything a Democrat says. Bill Clinton set the standard!)
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To: mft112345

If it was his family murdered, Mr. Shermer would be singing a different tune. He is so twisted by the politics of victimhood that he is incapable of rational thought.


12 posted on 05/27/2004 6:10:08 AM PDT by tkathy (nihilism: absolute destructiveness toward the world at large and oneself)
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To: mft112345

Michael Shermer at least makes it clear that Americans were hated by millions (as he put it) long BEFORE the Bush administration took office and before 911!!! The rest of his reasoning is pathetic, but at least he got one thing right.


13 posted on 05/27/2004 6:13:03 AM PDT by BillyCrockett
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To: tkathy
If it was his family murdered, Mr. Shermer would be singing a different tune.

Yeah, just like Michael Berg. < /sarcasm>

14 posted on 05/27/2004 6:16:49 AM PDT by Tijeras_Slim (John Kerry - Not the Swiftest Boat in the Delta.)
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To: mft112345

Methinks he has not read Scott Peck's "People of the Lie"

"The evil deny the suffering of their guilt - the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection - by casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. They cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society"

Cheers,


15 posted on 05/27/2004 6:36:03 AM PDT by Texaspeptoman
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To: mft112345

I suggest that if Mr. Shermer or one or more of his relatives had been in one of the towers on 9/11, he'd have written a very different book.


16 posted on 05/27/2004 6:48:33 AM PDT by MizSterious (First, the journalists, THEN the lawyers.)
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To: MizSterious
I suggest that if Mr. Shermer or one or more of his relatives had been in one of the towers on 9/11, he'd have written a very different book.

No, there's no cure for stupid.

17 posted on 05/27/2004 7:04:41 AM PDT by talleyman (Never question the patriotism of Democrats - there's none to question)
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To: mft112345

Moral equivalency.... I wonder if Mr. Shermer would understand someone's attempted murder of him, as just a difference of opinion.

Mark


18 posted on 05/27/2004 7:05:36 AM PDT by MarkL (The meek shall inherit the earth... But usually in plots 6' x 3' x 6' deep...)
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To: mft112345
"To achieve true understanding and enlightenment it might help to understand what the other side was thinking."

Now that's wisdom. Now that I understand that a leopard cannot change it's spots and only does what leopards are supposed to do, I'll be sure to avoid leopards. And if they venture into my yard I'll just have do what I need to do to prevent that. I'll build a fence. Yes, that will work. But wait! It can jump the fence. Okay, I'll bang on some kettles and make some noise. That doesn't work either. Just wakes the jungle up and all the other leopards come over to see what's happening. What to do when it is man against beast? Only one thing to do. When they get too invasive and nasty and start eating people you put them on their own island surrounded by alligators.

So, I'm not mad at the leopards anymore than someone should be mad at a cockroach. You don't see the pest control guy screaming and stomping on every bug he exterminates, do you? No, of course not. He just waves his magic wand and does what needs to be done and then goes home and has a beer.

19 posted on 05/27/2004 7:05:49 AM PDT by Eastbound ("Neither a scrooge nor a patsy be.")
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To: mft112345
"...Nor is it simply a matter of who is in the right. It is, at least on one important level, a difference of perspective. To achieve true understanding and enlightenment it might help to understand what the other side was thinking."

This is a potentially fatal mental illness, understanding what your would-be killers are thinking.

It is epidemic in Europe, and is well-established here through the schools and the "mainline" Protestant churches.

We may need to extirpate this illness in order to survive.

20 posted on 05/27/2004 7:10:14 AM PDT by Jim Noble (Now you go feed those hogs before they worry themselves into anemia!)
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