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.
There are no guarantees that extending rights to others will secure them for yourself; respectors of rights are murdered every day. One could just as easily assemble a gang of thugs to protect one's existence and obtain the objects of one's desire. Stalin was pretty successful on his own terms.
Do you have evidence for everything that you believe? It seems to me that without knowing some things without knowing why you know them, proof itself becomes impossible.
...a natural cause for the moral tendency observed in many humans
Are you saying that there is a purely naturalistic, materialistic cause for why we "ought" to live a certain way?
Cordially,
Thank you for the heartfelt and quite cogent argument, LogicWings.
Your welcome, and thank you for the kind characterization of my words. By the way, I was looking back to a response that someone else had posted, and he didn’t include the quote so I didn’t quite understand the context, and in looking for it I came across this post. I want you to know that this post never posted in My Comments so I was not being rude and ignoring you, I never saw it. A full looking of all my posts never shows a single one from you. Don’t know what the glitch is there, maybe God didn’t like what I said to you.
I gather the answer is, unaided logic cannot ever get you from "here" to "there." "Here" being where we humans live, in the full functioning of our divinely-given faculties; "there" being the way God sees....
Ok, but from my point of view you aren’t really saying anything here except to set me up to abandoning logic at some point for belief. This is precisely what I will not do.
You said this marvelous thing: "HE determines whether I question HIM or not so if I question HIM it is because HE has already decided that I would."
This is a classic Apologetic position, I can’t claim it. Do you understand the significance this has for the concept of freewill?
Just from the habit of natural reasoning, may we posit that God, whose "perspective," the Holy Scriptures tell us, is eternity (i.e., "no time"), knows everything that can and will and does happen in the manifestation of Eternity.
Actually this is scripturally based not from natural reasoning. I don’t want get into a ‘in verse # it says’ type discussion here but the paraphrased line is ‘He knows all things from the beginning’ and it is, once again, an classic Apologetic assertion that He is both Omniscient and Omnipotent. Your first statement also implies that there is something other than ‘natural reasoning’ but I see no reason to think this.
On the other hand, what man knows is something that, man being a creature, is experienced as an intimately personal existence unfolding in natural space-time. That is, in the finite.
It has been suggested that what man sees of ultimate truth is radically partial, such that it is effectively only what a "prisoner" could see from a tiny window lighting his cell of incarceration. Which is exactly: Not much.
Begs the Question that there is an ‘ultimate truth’ that is transcendent to the natural space-time and this is exactly the point that I see no justification for. Just because someone ’suggests’ something doesn’t mean that it is true, or should be used as the basis for philosophical reasoning.
But God's knowledge does not bind human choice. Man may freely choose evil. God's will does not obviate or preclude free human action. Man has free will, and intellect -- divine gifts. Man is invited to perceive the divine perspective, though this may require considerable spiritual effort on his part. God lets us decide whether to accept the invitation, or to decline it.
If God is Omniscient and Omnipotent as the Scriptures say, and Christian Apologetics assert then freewill is impossible. I have had this discussion countless times and I know you won’t agree with me, but there are a pile of unresolvable contradictions between these concepts and the only way to surmount them is through faith taking precedence over logic. I have yet to see an argument that justifies abandoning logic. I do not, I did not, freely choose evil. It was imposed upon me by Adam’s folly.
The idea that there is a ’divine perspective’ Begs the Question that there is a such a perspective that is separate from the natural one, the logical one, the reasoned one, and this is exactly what there is no evidence for.
p.s.: IMHO, the doctrine of predestination only works from the human perspective.... I hope I don't get too flamed for mentioning this.
I hope nothing I’ve said to you sounds like a flame. I am trying very hard to watch my fingers, (makes it hard to watch the screen!) And in my not so humble opinion, (or so I’ve been told) if all my choices have already been foreseen by an Omnipotent Being that created everything that is in existence, in perfect accord with that foreseeing, (and it cannot be otherwise or HE isn‘t Omniscient) then the idea that I have freewill is an illusion.
It is hard to understand the context here, you give me so little to go on, but I will try.
The whole of the Christain faith is dependent upon the necessity that the Christ Redeem all of humanity from the Fall, which was the Original Sin that opened the door for all the others.
If you hold that there is no Original Sin, then the statement that 'Man is man' is accurate.
The idea that man is 'ultimately wicked and depraved' is at the heart of the Christian Doctrine and is rooted in Original Sin. If there is no Original Sin, then man isn't ultimately wicked and depraved, then things would be different and man would just be man, as you say.
I'm talking about a principle of morality, and ultimately a principle of government, which is what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is ultimately based upon.
If I can get enough people to agree with me that the only way any of us can be assured that our own lives will be protected is by agreeing to extend the same rights to everyone, then I can set up an institution based upon that social contract to achieve that end.
We can then set up such things as police departments and armies to separate those who don't agree from the society we have created by that social contract
Yes, ultimately it comes down to a matter of force, but those people who reason soundly, and cooperate together in the agreement that by mutually agreeing that we all have the same rights in principle as a predicate for guaranteeing them for oneself can then create those institutions that can guarantee them to the greatest degree that they can be guaranteed. We will will always have criminals and others, like Stalin, who will refuse to respect the rights of others and who will try to use force to achieve their ends. But those who adhere and cooperate according to the principle I stated can defeat them in the long run.
I used the word 'guarantee' in the sense of an ideal, not an achievable end, although if that were possible, I would. As it is I can't think of a better one.
In the long run we'll all be dead. Stalin lived a lifetime imposing his will upon others. If protecting one's physical life is the standard of morality, then Stalin was a moral success, no? Or is being concerned about what happens in the physical world after one's death a part of morality?
What do you mean by free will?
If by free will you mean the ability to choose to do just exactly what you want to do, uncompelled and unconstrained by external or internal compulsion or constraint, then you have free will.
There is nothing inherently contradictory between your free will and God's omniscience and Omnipotence.
Cordially,
Yes, I don't know in advance whether in particular case I chose evil according to the 'book' of my life known to God. But after the fact if I do choose evil I can justify it by saying that I couldn't possibly do anything else since NOW we know that it had been predetermined. What do you think?
Regards.
From your original post #148 to me that started the conversation, which is what I went back to, to get the context of the conversation, which was a little confusing, as I said.
I am not trying to put works in your mouth or make you say something you didn't say.
Besides, what's wrong with man just being man? Since there is no one else to compare mankind with, why don't we just say that man is exactly the way he is suppossed to be, some bad, some good.
There is nothing wrong with man just being man, man qua man. I'm not saying there is. I am not making a case for Original Sin, I am making the case against it. We don't disagree here.
It isn't me that finds it hard to accept man just as he is.
No, he wasn't. By taking the actions he did against others he demonstrated that there were no rights, no morality, and the only thing that mattered was power. This meant that anyone had the 'right' (to use the term loosely, maintaining consistency with the values that Stalin promulgated) to use any means to murder him, and on and on and on.
Civilization does not exist by this method. It is an abandonment of reason in the favor of force. Sacrificing thought to whim. What Stalin did was exploit those who still lived by the very values that he rejected, the right to live one's life for oneself, and was merely a robber. That this is to the ultimate detriment of everyone, even Stalin, is the logical and inevitable consequence.
It is no different than the their who steals your wallet for the achievement of momentary gain. He may gain for the moment but when he does that he ceases to lay claim to any 'civilized' behaviour on the part of anyone else. In the words of a long forgotten phrase that no one uses anymore, this is not in 'one's own best self interest' which requires reason and the recognition of the principle that I elucidated that began this discussion. The murderer can't claim injustice when he is murdered in turn, he has created the very values that leads to his own demise.
Or is being concerned about what happens in the physical world after one's death a part of morality?
You can be concerned with whatever you want to be concerned with, but that doesn't mean there is any reason for it. No one really knows if there is an afterlife so I don't see why it should be the basis of a morality here in reality. If we are going to have a morality that applies equally to everyone, whether they believe in an afterlife or not, then it had better based upon reasons that make sense here in the physical world, not on the premise of an afterlife that not everyone believes and many dispute as to what that afterlife consists of.
Morality needs to be based upon more than just a bunch of opinions, or it will be rejected by those who don't share the same opinion, the situation we have today. We need to do better than this.
If by free will you mean the ability to choose to do just exactly what you want to do, uncompelled and unconstrained by external or internal compulsion or constraint, then you have free will.
Well, you ask me and then you define it just fine. I mean, there are a pile of quibbles here, I can't fly to Brazil by flapping my arms, but we are talking about something else here, so let's not get lost there. For the most part the definition is fine.
There is nothing inherently contradictory between your free will and God's omniscience and Omnipotence.
If we maintain the context of The Fall and the concept of Original Sin, then this is not true, there is an inherent conflict.
If you are talking abstractly of an Omniscient and Omnipotent Creator of the universe who doesn't care what I do and neither judges nor condemns anyone the basis of beliefs or actions, then what you said is true.
Hey, no need to apologize. The way some of these people fly off the handle it is easy to get defensive, even justified. I speak from recent experience.
I could see the misunderstanding and I just couldn't understand where I was going wrong in explaining what it was. If anything I take these discussions as a lesson in how to communicate.
Besides you made up for it completely by your explanation of the punishment for original sin. Best laugh I've had in a while.
It may be as you say, LogicWings. But somehow I doubt it. Still I’m sorry for the trouble pinging you; I don’t know the reason for it.
WRT your last, I was a little confused at first about what you wanted from me. I thought maybe you were offering an opportunity for doctrinal disputation. Once I figured out that wasn’t what this was all about, I was very relieved. For I have yet to see any benefit to be gained from disputing with coreligionists of whatever sect. I would have respectfully declined to “go there.”
But then I realized what you were really asking of me was to “prove” the existence of God. Which of course I cannot do, as I suspect you already know.
What you may not suspect, however, is how very pointless I find that exercise.
I gather from what you wrote in your last that, as far as you are concerned, natural reasoning and logic are all man needs to obtain reliable information relevant to the human condition, that nothing more is necessary. Well, I think I get along tolerably well with natural reasoning and logic – with respect to their proper objects. But what I have realized is that, without a “proper object,” they are of little help.
When it comes to God, we do not find a “proper object” for the intentional consciousness. For in the spirit of St. Anselm’s sublime prayer, I say: “Thou art not only that than which no greater can be conceived, Thou art greater than what can be conceived.” If we can’t “conceive” or “conceptualize” something, then natural reason and logic have nothing to do at all. The only traction that they have is with objects that can properly be intended. But God does not lie within the field of “intendable objects.”
An “intendable” object is something that can be held or “possessed” in consciousness long enough and "solidly" enough that the operations of reason and logic have something that can be cognitively "worked on." But what finite, mortal consciousness can comprehend St. Anselm’s “incomprehensible” so as to be able to intend it?
From our own lived experience, we know – or ought to know – that certain “things” (for lack of a better word) can only be seen in their effects. Examples would include such “things” as goodness, justice, beauty – even truth itself. Because we never get the opportunity to say “howdy-do” to such “things” walking down the street on any given day, does that mean that we really believe they are superstitious fictions?
And if we say “no, these are not superstitious fictions,” then how can we say that the Source from which they all obtain is a fiction?
And if you think they do not have a common Source, then I’d be very glad to entertain your speculation as to why they do not; and assuming God is not the common source, if you could please designate any other source.
If you were to say that all these “things” – goodness, justice, beauty, truth – can be explained purely on the basis of, say, natural evolution, then I need to see your evidence in order to understand your position.
It seems to me that God has been extraordinarily generous with the “effects” made available to us by which to understand Him, not to mention the spiritual and intellectual “equipment” vested in us by virtue of our (created) humanity. I can name three basic classes of such “effects”: Holy scripture, the natural world (creation), and the responsiveness of the soul to its divine source and ground.
In all three “venues,” God tells us of Himself “truly, but not exhaustively” (to quote the dearly departed Francis Schaffer).
You wrote that I implied “there is something other than ‘natural reasoning’ but I see no reason to think this.” I do more than imply. On this question, I assert.
When it comes to divine things, to the most essential things of the human spirit, natural reasoning doesn’t have very much to do at all.
Which puts us at loggerheads, LogicWings. For you put your faith in “natural reasoning,” and I put my faith in God. A God who, from the purely human perspective of intramundane existence, may appear both unreasonable and illogical. (Just goes to show how useless these tools really are in grappling with putative “cognitive objects” which are not truly “cognitive objects,” and for which the tools are therefore totally unsuited.)
But it seems you place your faith in what you can “see.” And that is the lot of all of us humans. But there is seeing, and then there is seeing. The principal difference consists in whether the seeing is being done through the eye, or through the soul.
In putting the allurements of purely human knowledge before what you owe to God, possibly you repeat the same “mistake” that Adam made. I gather you think Adam was “scum” – though God has let us know He was pleased with His Creation. But Adam chose possession of knowledge over fidelity to his God. (He apparently did this to please his wife. But Satan got the whole benefit from the transaction.)
Worse, you have made this choice – and it is fundamentally a choice that can only be made in faith – even though a divine blood price has already been paid in the fullest to redeem and atone for Adam’s “error.”
There are deep aspects to life that are irreducibly paradoxical, mysterious – and often quite comical (when not “tragic”) – wouldn’t you say?
Bottom line, I think it’s probably a fairly perilous enterprise in terms of our deepest well-being to consider human knowledge as superior to divine wisdom. I can smell the sulphur of Satan’s “non serviam” in his construction of the choice that faces human free will at every time, place, and juncture: “It is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.”
IMHO, this is the situation most to be avoided: You really don’t want to go there. To do so is not only to cut yourself off from God; but also to cut yourself off from yourself. At some deeply mysterious level, God and Man are One.
Me: If protecting one's physical life is the standard of morality, then Stalin was a moral success, no?
No, he wasn't. By taking the actions he did against others he demonstrated that there were no rights, no morality, and the only thing that mattered was power. This meant that anyone had the 'right' (to use the term loosely, maintaining consistency with the values that Stalin promulgated) to use any means to murder him, and on and on and on.
True. But Stalin was able to avoid being murdered. He survived on his terms. You stated in post #568:
"The idea that without God there are no moral truths is another fallacy that I don't agree with. If I take my existence as an axiom and reason as the basis for living as a human being, then the extension of the same rights to all others as a predicate of me guaranteeing them for myself follows.
The extension does not follow. Stalin reasoned that he could further his existence through the exercise of power, rather than through the extension of rights to all. He was correct.
Civilization does not exist by this method.
Agreed. But civilization is not one of your stated basis for morality. Only existence as an individual and the use of reason are.
It is an abandonment of reason in the favor of force. Sacrificing thought to whim. What Stalin did was exploit those who still lived by the very values that he rejected, the right to live one's life for oneself, and was merely a robber. That this is to the ultimate detriment of everyone, even Stalin, is the logical and inevitable consequence.
No. Stalin reasoned that wielding force would be a more successful strategy to further his existence than engaging in civilization building via uncoerced persuasion would be. He was correct. It may have been a detriment to others (many, many others), but unless there is something more to morality than existence and reason, I don't see how Stalin should have seen what he did as immoral---he used reason in the application of power to further his existence, your stated basis of morality.
The murderer can't claim injustice when he is murdered in turn, he has created the very values that leads to his own demise.
Yes. He can only conclude (were he alive) that he failed in achieving his goal. Those who are able to kill successfully (i.e. Stalin) need not conclude that they failed, but rather that recognizing "the rights of others" (to use the term loosely) would have been an impediment to the furtherance of their existence.
Me: Or is being concerned about what happens in the physical world after one's death a part of morality?
You can be concerned with whatever you want to be concerned with, but that doesn't mean there is any reason for it. No one really knows if there is an afterlife so I don't see why it should be the basis of a morality here in reality.
I wasn't alluding to an afterlife by asking this question. Sorry for not being clearer. I was referring to being concerned with things like "civilization building". Building, maintaining, and defending the institutions of government is a long term proposition. It is an endevour that does not necessarily bear sufficient fruit in one's lifetime to justify engaging in it. Why, if the basis of morality is only the furthering of one's existence, should everyone conclude that civilization building is the way to go? As you agreed, there are no guarantees. George W. Bush could not reasonably further his ends today by using the tactics that Stalin successfully used. But in Stalin's time and place, Stalin reasoned he could, so he acted, and lived his life on his own terms.
We need to do better than this.
There is no "we" in "me" and reason if me and reason is the only basis of morality. Please recognize I'm not accusing you of Stalinism, you obviously wish to defend the concept of rights. I'm making an ad hominem arguement to demonstrate that there's a gap between "my existence as an axiom and reason as the basis for living as a human being" and your extension of rights to all. Stalin, by reasoning and acting as he did, stepped into the gap and demonstrated that the will to power is sometimes a successful means to the furtherance of one's existence, thus negating the moral necessity of extending "rights" to others, according to your definition of morality.
Man and god are one, but you and I don't mean this in the same way that you do, but just as sincerely. This is the problem that I have when conversing with both you and A-G. I end up being in the position of seeming to be a robber stealing candy from children, of robbing beauty and innocense from the pure. You should really be in a Sunday school somewhere teaching children the blessings of the Christ, not debating philosophy with a corrupt old logician.
You raise a number of issues, "truth, beauty and goodness (justice)' that require lengthy discussion, and I must, in this mortal coil, work tomorrow and cannot answer now.
But I will say, man and god are one, but you and I don't mean this in the same way that you do, but just as sincerely.
The difference is in thinking there is the smell of sulfur in the 'non serviam' when there is nothing to serve, no hell to reign in and no heaven to serve in and no way to prove that either exists other than a dream.
You have attributed to me several times a 'faith' that is not faith, only misuse of the word."For you put your faith in “natural reasoning,” and I put my faith in God."
I have a natural reason - and as a natural being I can have nothing else other than natural reaoning - and you have nothing other than irrational belief for your faith in God. Mine is not a faith. It may not be correct but it is based upon my existence and all that I know of that existence. Faith is believing in that for which there is no physical, natural reason, BY DEFINITION. (sorry to shout!)
There are deep aspects to life that are irreducibly paradoxical, mysterious – and often quite comical (when not “tragic”) – wouldn’t you say?
Yes, I quite agree with you, but not in the way you mean.
The Universe is a Mystery, and you don't know what you think you know. In fact, you don't know anything.
If you lived a million years you still wouldn't know enough to know what you are asserting here. It is all a Mystery. A giant Mystery. Think on THAT for a while. What you think you know is a fantasy. Contemplate the Mystery.
I like it. But I don't know what to do with it.
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