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.

So the mental process precedes the first concept, and it was a tabula rasa mind, a mind without concepts, that performed the mental process that produced the first concept?

For the sake of argument:

When the doctor slapped your butt and you drew your first breath in shock and pain, it was no longer a tabula rasa mind. The process of filling it had already been imposed by reality.

You were laid to your mother's breast and one of the only two instincts known to afflict man was rewarded, the urge to suckle, (the other being the fear of falling, no doubt left over from our simian ancestors living in the trees.)

That is also carved upon the blank slate. So far we have pain, necessity (of breathing) and pleasure (for reward of right action). By the time your first hour has passed your meager brain is overflowing with the wonder of it all, and you fall fast asleep so your burgeoning mind can try to make 'sense' of it all. It will take 500 days and ten times as many hours of experience and sleep before you will begin to accumulate enough experience to approach forming a concept.

The 'process' cannot 'process' without something to 'process.'

Other than that we have the math worked out better, there is little ontological difference between an attempt to achieve orbit using Newton's laws, and an attempt to make the universe a better place for humans using moral laws.

Again, what are you comparing the universe WITH when you want to make it a "better" place? For the comparison to even be coherent you MUST be referring to a standard that is not part of the universe. The evolutionary myth does not logically allow this incoherent comparison.

...For the orbit to even be coherent you MUST be referring to an existing orbit that is not presently part of the universe. The orbital myth does not logically allow this incoherent comparison.

...

In my opinion, too many big words have clogged up your brain. It is not a matter of any great puzzlement that I can imagine, and try to implement, moral precepts predicated on mundane observation of how the world works. As I said, the biggest difference is that I lack a precise math. This does not automatically make something transcendental--it makes it's abstractions vague.

Yet there is nothing in your description of adulterous behavior by men that indicates any approval or disapproval of such behavior,

Indeed. As the point was to illustrate how impotent an arbitrary transcendental morality would be in practice, where it conflicts with sound DNA strategy, not to argue a moral issue.

To repeat myself: people have a natural inherited tendency to be moral arising from obvious sources. It can be harnessed to ends it was not originally evolved for, such as universal human love--in an age of a-bombs (an ambition, I'll point out, that I can arrive at without obvious transcendental necessity), but that won't happen if you think it takes no effort of will and operate on the lotus dream that morals are provided to us by the Good Morals Fairy.

Good News For The Day

‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:39)

"A commission of public enquiry, conducted in a Western country recently, sounded a desperate note for the future of human relations. It warned: "The most pressing problem in this country seems to be for its people to learn to live again in a real community, where people are concerned for one another's welfare."

"Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: "I could never understand how one could love one's neighbor. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind, that one can't love-though one might love those at a distance. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular."

"The sad truth of human beings is, that they can... love the idea of love---but find themselves incapable of practicing it."

"We easily talk of loving our neighbor, but baulk like Balaam's ass when it comes to doing it. In the last 100 years normal human beings have murdered one hundred million of their fellows. Since the two world wars of last century, we have readied ourselves to a shocking level of preparedness, to violate and exterminate our neighbors on an awful scale. Karl Barth commented, that it only needed the atom and the hydrogen bomb to complete the self disclosure of human nature. In other words, the stark malignancy of human evil-our unwillingness to love-is now writ large."

"Over against the disease of lovelessness, stands the injunction: "Love your neighbor as yourself." We know this law asks more of us than we can give, but we also know that without it, we shall perish. Our only hope, is that God will love us in spite of our weakness, and that he will patiently fashion us after his likeness."

I think burning innocent people is wrong because they are innocent of being witches.

What? Perhaps burning innocent people is wrong because they are innocent.

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

Stone them. God specifically said stone them. Matthew apparently sez, as per Tribune7, that stoning is null and void, although being a witch is still a sin. Since stoning was verboten, I guess burning was taken to be prescribed. I believe it satisfies the golden rule, since, if you were a devout deputy of the inquisition, you'd want your soul scoured in the cleansing fires of God's Mercy were you to be shut off from God by witchery.

How say you Tribune7? Have you found a clear formulation for God's Law, as modified by the Gospels, that explains why I can't be a witch, but I can be a pig-eater?

You could see it that way, yet not all orthodox jews are denied salvation.

So, hopefully we need not return to the possible confusion of Jew and Pharisee. Both are jew, but both are not Pharisee. If Kant had ever been our guide we could pick up from one of his elementary prolegomena,

Wenn man eine Erkenntniß als Wissenschaft darstellen will, so muß man zuvor das Unterscheidende, was sie mit keiner andern gemein hat, und was ihr also eigenthümlich ist, genau bestimmen können

And if that can't be done with a simple distinction between Jew and Pharisee, we too will be tempted with a misologia while bumbling about trying to distinguish the several kinds of law --more than 2 by St. Paul--not to mention the tax on all our patience when posters, in their failed disinterestedness, make statements about one to apply to the other.

As with so much of the Acts and Gospels, you have the cart before the horse. As the gospels intended, Pharasee meant orthodox jew, as you have said, without noticing.

What does this mean? I've read it five times and I still don't know what you are saying. Is it that I didn't "notice" that I had "said" what the gospels intended? Or that "the gospels" hadn't noticed that "Pharasee meant orthodox Jew"?

At any rate, I don't see how the _New Advent Encyclopedia_ that you quoted supports your notions that "Pharisees is just another word for jews" and that the pharisees were an "ethnic tribe".

Nothing like the smell of fresh-roasted Jew to tickle the ribs, I guess.

Again you are about as clear as a pond full of carp. Whatever you meant, this appears to be ugly beyond any acceptable taste.

I tried it with the law against eating pigs

Quote the law please so that there is no confusion.

Give me a break.

Sorry. I didn’t realize this request was too difficult for you.

Also, please excuse me for thinking that you wanted to know which laws of the Bible still apply today, and in what manner. These statements of yours had me confused:

“Well, than, I'll repeat the question. How can I tell which are the "ceremonial" parts of the Old Testement, which I am allowed to regard as invalid and disregard? Is it an algorithm? Is it a list? I'd like the follow the Law, and be moral--how do you expect me to do that if I don't know what it is?” –donh, post 1017.

“Ok, but I still have no useful understanding about what the Law actually is. I cannot find the detailed lists that put some of the Old Testement under the aegis of "ceremonial" law, and some not. Is there a version of the bible that puts the "ceremonial" (ie, invalid) parts of the bible in, say, green, so that I can know to ignore them?” –donh, post 927.

"Are the 10 commandments rules a christian must consult, or are they not? Can I kill my father if it satisfies the Golden Rule? Is the Golden Rule the only moral law? Is it the moral law at all? Does Hebrews provide me a written alternative list to the 10 commandments? Why is the rule against letting witches live a "ceremonial" law, and the rule about honoring your mother and father is not? If it is not--I'm still not very clear." –donh, post 864.

But then I remembered this statement of yours…:

“Why can't both parties be an hallucination of a non-existent entity? Because you say so? If you can hallucinate me into being an entity that exists only in someone else's mind, I can certainly hallucinate an entity in an alternative universe that's doing the hallucinating.” -donh, post 556.

…and it hit me…the law against eating pigs was an hallucination of that noted anti-semite: Miss Piggy, Queen of the (not) Green Letter Bible.

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Question: What is the color of blind hatred?

Answer: Whatever donh says it is.

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