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.
Don't give up so fast. True, we cannot know God in His essence, but we can know that God exists from His effects. As Scripture tells us: "The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Rm. 1:20). Also remember that faith requires an object. The articles of faith are reasonable and must be formulated logically. Therefore we must know something about God, even if that knowledge is negative.
An imperfect analogy can be drawn between my relationship with God and my dog's relationship with me. My dog knows that I exist, but he has a very limited understanding of what I know. Similarly, we can know that God exists, but we also have a very limited understanding of what God knows. The analogy is imperfect because the difference between man and God is categorically infinite. Such is the relationship between creature and Creator.
Even so, we can know some things about God positively through unaided reason such as the fact that God is the Designer, Creator, Prime Mover, Uncaused Cause and Most Perfect Being. We can also know that God is One, Being, True, Good and Beautiful.
Except for this assertion? For a guy who doesn't know anything you seem have some strong opinions.
I will grant that existence is ultimately mysterious, although the acceptance of mystery does not necessarily entail the acceptance of universal skepticism.
That's the problem with mystics. They like it, but nobody else can know what to do with it. It is not a humane thing. Mysticism is an intensely personal thing, even while it is popularly expressed by an admiration for "what is real." Most of the time it ends up in the contemplation of a self as it steams off mysterious vapors. When those vapors condense, they rarely end up convincing anyone but themselves that they are one with God.
That's one kind of mysticism.
Another kind has nothing to do with the contemplation of the self, but rather that of the other. The attitude of the other kind is an assent that one knows only in part. It ends in respect and that is preeminently humane.
A name for the one is Hegel. A name for the other is Jesus. The unity of the first arises out of knowledge (sometimes called gnosis); the unity of the other is won through free will, promise, and fidelity.
Socrates incarnate!
This answer is a little too long, but I should think that Scripture affirms both the trancendence of God and the free will of man. Your question has been anticipated:
Romans 9:
19One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"
The answer given to your question is that the Creator retains the right to rule His creation, and the lawbreaking creature cannot justify himself in the Lawgiver's Court by simply by pointing the finger of blame at the Lawgiver:
20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' "[8] 21Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
That is the first distinction. There is a category difference between Creator and creature, which is why there is no inherent contradiction between His sovereignty and our free will.
The situation we are in, As O.P. once put it, is this:
"Naturally, Man has done and is doing Evil every day; has blasphemed and is blaspheming God every day; and has ruined and is ruining God's creation, every day. All of this, by free and uncompelled deliberate choice. And we have no Want for genuine good, no Want for true Godliness whatsoever, upon which we might Will to do otherwise. We like it this way."
And elswhere he says,
In his natural, Fallen state, Man possesses no righteous Wants on which He acts -- as a Race, we possess only wants which are either actively malicious, or wants which are only humanly benevolent: wants which are humane to a Man, but actually vile and repugnant in the sight of God!
Here is Man's problem:
Ergo, Salvation is precisely synonymous with the Raising of Lazarus -- FIRST God, of His own volition, enlivens us TO respond,
Because each of our evil deeds is by free and uncompelled deliberate choice, we are in no position to justify our rebellion against the righteous Sovereignty of a Holy God. We are in God's dock. He is not in ours. There is nothing we can do to justify ourselves. We would do better to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Court:
22What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-- 24even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25As he says in Hosea:
"I will call them 'my people' who are not my people;
and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one,"[9] 26and,
"It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
'You are not my people,'
they will be called 'sons of the living God.' "[10]
27Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
"Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
28For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality."[11]
29It is just as Isaiah said previously:
"Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah."[12]
Cordially,
In sharing your wisdom, you have given LogicWings a great gift and I commend you for it. The only gifts I have are unconditional Christian love and prayer.
God is the head of my family - not a figment of my imagination – I know Him and His son Jesus personally, and He lives here with me in the person of the Holy Spirit. So when LogicWings held my Father in contempt at 547, he also held the rest of my family in contempt.
Offending me is of no consequence because it is automatically forgiven, but considering the object and nature of the charge, the only course for me is to keep away from the broken cistern (Jer 2:13)
Thank you so much, Aquinasfan, for your excellent post.
What I was trying to suggest is God is not a "natural object." What we know of Him is by virtue of His gift of the Spirit, not by what we are able to discover by means of our own unaided powers. But then we may conclude that what He has intimated to us -- through Scripture, His creation, and His appeal to our soul -- is certainly reasonable and can be formulated logically.
Amen. Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for your beautiful witness, which moves me deeply.
OK. I get it now ;-)
You can take the hallucination as far as you like, however, the fact that the ultimate one is hallucinating proves the existence of at least the one being.
This is not a fact--that is a speculation built on a house of ontological fluff. You don't prove things with speculations. How do you know that there's not an endless closed cycle of beings hallucinating each other?
I mean, how can there be thought without existence?
How do you know it's thought? How do you know it's ours?
Whether it is supernatural or natural, the thinking being must perforce exist. Again, let me reiterate, this question has been discussed by those much smarter than either of us. If you can find a refutation let me know.
Discussing is one thing. Proving is quite another. No matter how smart you are, until you submit the proof I can read, even if I have to labor through the night to catch up with your giant brain's outpourings, it's just hair-brain frat house jive.
That may be true or not, however conscience is much more than that.
So? The question was--could there be a natural explanation for the moral tendency in humans? Natural selection is incapable of specifying what humans may choose to attach that capacity to. Just as the baby ducks can detach their programming and apply it to human substitutes, humans can attach their moral sentimentality to most anything approximating morality they are repeatedly exposed to, and have no obvious reason to question.
Then, I saw we were arguing about whether we really exist or not and whether Natural Selection (bow down, bow down) has made us love our neighbors.
And I treasure the Christian mystics, I really do, especially John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, almost as much as PH must love [some materialist here].
But, cornelis, the reason I am yammering on and on is
I don't understand your post.
It seems no proofs are possible if thought does not prove existence. Is 2+2=4 provable, or is the proof (a sequence of consistent thoughts) just another potential hallucination that can't be proven to exist? Or is a proof something other than a non-hallucinatory sequence of consistent thoughts?
This is very thought provoking.
If that is the case then I exist because I am the being hallucinating. Look, you cannot even discuss it without saying that there are 'beings'. That's how obvious it is. Further, thinking takes place in time and something - whether natural or supernatural - which takes place in time has to exist at least while it is going on. In other words, one can say that thinking takes place outside of space, but one cannot say that it takes outside of time.
Frankly, aside from everything else, I really do not see how we can doubt our own existence. Anyways, I found this site which gives a pretty detailed description on the subject, Rene Descartes just scanned it a bit but seems pretty good. Maybe it will keep us from going in circles.
So? The question was--could there be a natural explanation for the moral tendency in humans? Natural selection is incapable of specifying what humans may choose to attach that capacity to. Just as the baby ducks can detach their programming and apply it to human substitutes, humans can attach their moral sentimentality to most anything approximating morality they are repeatedly exposed to, and have no obvious reason to question.
Aaaah, but it is this detachment and attachment that is the problem. Let's look at something specific. Some say that some people are predisposed to violence, that they have it 'in them'. Some people are quick to anger. However, when we look at the material basis for this we find that yes, perhaps just about all violent people have the same genetic disposition, but we also find that some who have the same disposition do not go around killing people. Therefore there is something overpowering this genetic predisposition. It is not material and it can overcome material inclinations. Note this also, humans have all kinds of needs and even passions, however some restrain them and some let loose and harm others to achieve their needs. Therefore, I do not think we can say that our conscience cannot rule our actions.
Physicalism cannot account for morality. Moral incumbency, for example, is based on the assumption of free will. But volition infused with ethical content is completely unexplainable if everything about us is determined by our prior physical states.
To put it another way, if your consciousness of yourself is just a property created by your brain, a mere effect of chemical reactions in your brain, then you have no will. Your act of deciding something is just a result of some physical process that came before it. Your choices are controlled by physical events outside of your will. Why? Well, if physical states of vibrating molecules produce particular mental states, which in turn produce particular physical states, and so on, then they are all just following one afar another in a determined pattern just like, well, baby ducks in a row.
The problem of a purely materialistic accounting of moral obligation is this: is the moral incumbency prior to the behavior? If it is, then it can't be the behavior itself. But then how does that fit the premise that everything about us is determined by our prior physical states?
Cordially,
LogicWings, That's a really huge "IF". And you've got such a whole lot riding on it. You have no principle by which you can "guarantee" rights for yourself, let alone extend them to anybody else. You are living in an total abstraction....
You are taking yourself as the standard against which God must be measured. You've got it exactly bass-ackwards.
Can you spell S-O-P-H-I-S-T?
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