Posted on 10/25/2002 12:14:19 AM PDT by jennyp
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.
Bullseye.
Interesting. Dogs learn their territory. They recognize landmarks. I don't know what else to make of it, if there is anything else.
Well said, bb, at #150. In a very quiet voice I would add that there has historically also been a fair amount of this activity going on with regard to the attributes of God. Or so it would seem to me ...
Oh, Excellent!
But for me the mystery of existence has proven profound enough to keep my pride in check. I take counsel from Santayana's description of Hegel: "He described what he knew best or had heard most, and felt he had described the universe." The same tendency surfaces often among many of our learned public intellectuals, especially in the sciences. I hope to avoid their condition. On rising each day --- this is strange, and probably foolish to admit, but quite true I assure you --- I ask myself as I stand before the mirror: "How did we get here? How did all this come to be?" After many years of starting my day with those questions, and much investigation, I can safely say that I'm no closer to the answers than I was when I first started asking them.
And beckett as well is in rare form! This company might even give me that added dash of humility some would say I sorely need!
Oh yes, dear Phaedrus. And so it seems to me, too!
Yet somehow or other, generally of late, mankind seems to feel comfortable with the idea of redefining everything that exists in/on his own terms.... Doesn't strike me like much of a good idea...nor you either, I imagine....
This is an accurate description of what has come to be considered the 'scientific' attitude in modern times and, to the best of my knowledge, owes its genesis to Bertrand Russell, who's epistemology was founded on the tenet of scientific verifiability. I.e., any claim not immediately testable under laboratory conditions is nonsense, except for tautological statements in mathematics and symbolic logic. Thus Russell was able, in one fell swoop, to destroy all previously existing metaphysics and theories of knowledge, at least in his opinion.
The problem, of course, is that such an arbitrary intellectual fiat has no rational basis itself, beyond satisfying the materialist's desire to cram the entire universe into a one-dimensional scientific model. If we believe Russell and like-minded followers, we should be obliged to throw out all philosophy prior to around the time of Newton, and exclude all subsequent thinking that does not strictly adhere to this very narrow criterion. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the school of Logical Positivism tried to do. No wonder it drove poor Wittgenstein to give up philosophy altogether. It is an intellectual trap that attempts to take the success of empirical science and impose it on all questions whatsoever -- and it leaves humanity all the poorer for the effort.
Man, this thread has turned out to have some legs!
Predicate logic doesn't really "fail" in natural science. It just isn't called into the game very often.
I probably should have used better phrasing. I know there are narrowly focused models for natural and human systems.
The statement that formalism was proven unfit by Gödel's incompleteness theorem was not mine, it comes from the linked article. However, since I'm of the Platonist school, I do agree with the observation.
IMHO, Platonism should be the least effected by Gödel because, under Platonism, the math already exists, waiting discovery. To me, that inoculates mathematical discovery from nay-sayings of all stripes.
I guess mathematical "ghosts" are ok with me (LOL!)
Of course, it really doesn't matter whether a man actively chooses to rebel (that is, to do evil), or merely backslides into it. The result is the same in either case, IMHO: disorder -- of the personality, of family and social connections; of the natural world. But maybe this sounds 'way too "simplistic."
I'll never forget the first time I spiritually read and therefore understood a phrase out of Hebrews where Christ is described as the express image of His [the Father's] person. It suddenly dawned on me that I could not tell where the Father ends and the Son begins. He loves the Father so much, He is completely surrendered, they are one.
The light went on in my spirit and I found myself rifling through other Scriptures and I could see things clearly that were previously hard to understand. Most importantly, John 17 came alive.
Truth is always simple!
I figured as much. That one was a honker. Pol Pot anyone?
I regret I haven't read enough of your posts to realize that you are an expert on Artificial Intelligence. The field is fascinating to me, though I am somewhat skeptical for the same reasons Penrose mentioned in Emperor's New Mind. LOL!
I do believe a Mathematical Theory of Everything is possible - along the lines outlined by Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Some Freepers laugh at me for being hopeful that a primordial algorithm will be discovered.
I truly believe that is as far as we can go in understanding origins in the natural realm and that it is possible --- if only theoretical physicists can conquer the "there be dragons there" qualms that lead to head-scratching theories such as multiple universes from multiple quantum fluctuations.
Current work on mathematical physics is fascinating to me. I've been watching this consortium for years now: Space-Time-Matter Consortium.
Thank you oh so very much for letting us know that some leaders in science are lurking here! What a thrill! I do hope they will offer some links now and again - we Freepers are sponges for science!
Again, thank you oh so very much for the great discussion!
You read the Bible and it "touches" you. There is resonance. I have not had the same experience but I have never devoted the necessary time to its study.
The strangest thing is that the Bible never came alive to me when I studied it. It was only when I read it casually, like a letter from home, that it came alive. In post #192 I mentioned one such experience to betty boop.
I fully agree with your statements:
There are many many examples of experiences and truths unexplainable by science and my own view is that science and religion are false opposites. Religious knowledge encompasses science and it would be quite appropriate, again IMHO, for religious folk to say to the scientists that it is out of line when they attempt to impose restrictions on acceptable evidence (eg. replicablilty) that serve to mask science's ignorance.
I think that there is an ongoing attempt to deify "science" and "reason" here in the West which IMHO must be made to fail.
Indeed, the convicting power of the Bible is amazing. I would that everyone would read it - or at least the Gospel of John.
Ack! You're killing me! :-) Penrose was a very bright physicist who should have NEVER have dabbled in AI and computational theory. The Emperor's New Mind is riddled with some subtle and not so subtle fundamental flaws. You can find rigorous slicing-n-dicing of his book by other mathematicians on the Internet; he has been pretty thoroughly lambasted for publishing that tripe, but then, it isn't an area of mathematics that he is particularly competent at. But it drives people who work in computational theory and cognitive science crazy because so many people have read that book. It is easy to find it plausible if you aren't too familiar with the mathematics, but it is definitely incorrect. When he talks about about AI, Penrose kind of loses his mind and waxes mystical without a real clue what he is talking about.
I'll let this one slide, but please don't consider that book an authoritative reference on anything. :-)
The history of AI is somewhat twisted in that for most of the 20th century, there was no mathematical theory of intelligence; attempts at AI were mostly blind shots in the dark hoping to get lucky. Recently, some very important breakthroughs have been made and some hard problems and conjectures have been solved. We actually have something resembling a very clear roadmap to AI for the first time and this has led to flurry of advancements in the last year or two. After being a pariah for a very long time, there is quite a bit of very smart money quietly being dumped into it based on recent developments. I'm extremely optimistic; everything is falling into place and a lot of questions are being answered where the theory actually maps well to what we know about the human brain. It just wasn't in any way that people imagined.
I do believe a Mathematical Theory of Everything is possible - along the lines outlined by Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Some Freepers laugh at me for being hopeful that a primordial algorithm will be discovered.
You are on a roll tonight. Mind you, I don't consider finding a primordial structure/algorithm to be all that foolish. I know enough to know not to dismiss it out of hand, though I won't venture to speculate at this point. Fortunately, Wolfram isn't as bad as Penrose; at least his math is valid and in some cases quite interesting. Unfortunately, Wolfram can't see past his own ego. As many other critics of the book have pointed out, there was only little really new in it if you were actually in the field and a lot of it had been published ten to twenty years ago. Also, there are quite a few allegations that he "appropriated" other people's ideas for his book without proper attribution. I have a mathematician friend who is very familiar with that field of mathematics and he was totally underwhelmed by the book. From the standpoint of importance it was all hype and no substance. My basic critique of his ideas are that there are alternatives to his ideas that are actually more elegant and more useful, but which he seems to ignore; even if some of the ideas are right, his version of them are almost certainly wrong. Wolfram is pretty much wedded to the ideas in his book, having worked with them for most of his life, and seems to have missed some really important developments in mathematics.
To put some kind of context on it, I would consider Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, and Bach" to be a far more seminal work than either of the two books you mention.
That said, there are some very deep and fundamental mathematical structures that cut across most fields of mathematics which you could consider to be something like the underlying algorithms of the universe. But I don't think they really look that much like Wolfram's vision. Nonetheless, I love this kind of stuff, and apparently so do many Freepers. :-)
This is an accurate description of what has come to be considered the 'scientific' attitude in modern times and, to the best of my knowledge, owes its genesis to Bertrand Russell, who's epistemology was founded on the tenet of scientific verifiability.
Hmmm, I don't think logical positivism has quite that long of a reach these days, but it is certainly influential. Anyway, Russell had a significant influence upon the logical positivists (so did Wittgenstein, even more than Russell), but the real father of logical positivism was a fellow by the name of Moritz Schlick.
Schlick is interesting for a couple of reasons, actually - one, he was pretty much the founding father of positivism, as I said. Two, he was actually a physicist, who started his career studying under Max Planck, and fell into philosophy later. Three, one of the most common critiques of positivism is that it renders ethics to be meaningless. Schlick happened to be quite interested in ethics and ethical systems, and he spent a great deal of time and effort reconciling ethical systems to a positivist framework - I'll leave it to you to look his work up and judge for yourself how successful he was, but it is well worth the effort regardless of how you come to see it.
Finally, more personally, if you're familiar with the life and work of Dietrich von Hildebrand - and what good Christian isn't? ;) - then you should know that, despite the possible implications of positivism, Schlick was practically von Hildebrand's only friend when they were at Vienna together.
Food for thought ;)
The problem, of course, is that such an arbitrary intellectual fiat has no rational basis itself, beyond satisfying the materialist's desire to cram the entire universe into a one-dimensional scientific model.
I don't know that it's entirely accurate to describe positivists as materialists - there's a difference between asserting that only the verifiable exists and asserting that only the verifiable is meaningful in a logical sense. If we take atheism, the denial that God exists, to be a materialist position, we have to recognize that positivism rejects atheism as a meaningful statement. IOW, in a positivist framework, the statement "God exists" is taken to be meaningless, and therefore any position you take on the issue is also meaningless - theism, atheism, and agnosticism are all equally meaningless in a positivist framework.
If we believe Russell and like-minded followers, we should be obliged to throw out all philosophy prior to around the time of Newton...
A little bit later than that - the positivists weren't particularly enamored of Kant, for example.
It is an intellectual trap that attempts to take the success of empirical science and impose it on all questions whatsoever -- and it leaves humanity all the poorer for the effort.
Not necessarily. Whether you subscribe to the positivist view of verifiability or not, it did lead directly to Popper's ideas on falsifiability, which have greatly enriched humanity, I think ;)
Hrrmph... I've read it end-to-end more than once in my life, and was immersed in it for my entire childhood as well. It didn't do diddly for me, so I don't bother any more. I've always been well-read, and that was a mediocre book with a dubious message that simply didn't have much sticking power for me. I must have been born without that illusive "God Module".
That said, I think Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" contains as much wisdom as the Bible, and in a better and more consistent format. Of course, I wouldn't base a religion around TEFL, and I'm not sure you could even if you wanted to. But I digress...
Is that by any chance why your Freeper handle is "tortoise?"
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