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.
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.
Lovely analysis, cornelis. Thank you.
Your choice of Hegel to illustrate the self-referential type is so apt. Hegel contemplates only Hegel -- or more precisely, his own abstract intellectual powers (which are so very vast!). He ends up with a system that relentlessly closes in on itself. There is no "Other" for Hegel: There is only Hegel.
And his system is "perfect" in that it needs nothing else. Of course, it omits the entire universe (and any "beyond" the universe might have), so there is no "admissible evidence" from that source by which to challenge his "System to end all systems."
But at bottom what he gives us is pretty much only an elegant exercise in solipsism. Or as Voegelin has put it, a "sorcerer's parlour trick." JMHO. FWIW.
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.
How is this a counter-argument? Some people are exposed to violence, and refrain. Some people are exposed to morality and refrain. Some people are exposed to carrots and refrain.
Nature or God endowed you with sentiments, which, to a good first approximation, can be entirely accounted for as enzymatic reactions to stimulus with an obvious genetic source. There is no demonstrated infallable gatekeeper telling each individual what the proper attachment of those sentiments are. The swizzle you are at is to suggest some entity not yet on the table exists because of this uncertainty of sentimental attachment.
This is not a pursuasive argument to me. So what if some things to which we attach our sentimental pre-dispositions aren't the reasons that caused them to evolve originally?
It seems no proofs are possible if thought does not prove existence.
I don't believe it--prove it. Euclid's proof is still valid and secure within it's own axiomatic system and domain of discourse, whatever the outcome of this argument.
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?
These questions are outside the domain of fundamental questions of ontological existence. If you accept the domain of natural numbers and Peano's axioms, you accept the proof that 2+2=4.
Nothing about this particular axiomatic system or domain of discourse forces you to accept them. Our assurance about them are, in a sense, self-contained. That's rather the point of doing it in the first place, don't you see?
This is very thought provoking.
And headache-inducing.
If that is the case then I exist because I am the being hallucinating.
So you say. But for no particularly good reason--you, of course, have no proof. It is just a conjecture, and quite a self-centered one. Who sez you are even one the main hallucinators involved in the self-hallucinating closed cycle?--just a side hallucination.
At any rate, even if you had a solid point--how is that a response? If you are going to proffer Berkelerian arguments, than your existence is being hallucinated regardless of whether or not there is an endless closed cycle of hallucination going on.
Look, you cannot even discuss it without saying that there are 'beings'. That's how obvious it is.
Obvious is one thing. An unquestionable axiomatic basis for thought upon which we will build a mighty temple of reason is quite another, with quite a bit more rigorous requirements which you have not met. Submit proof below when you are ready.
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.
As of about 1927 or so, the official take on this is that time and space are different dimensions of the same phenomenon. There may very well be an uber-universe from which various mixes of time&space blossom forth to produce various universes. These universes may leak through to each other. At any rate, when our universe goes, the current betting in the physics pits, is that it takes our particular manifestation of time with it.
Time and space are differing...
This is presently not considered likely. Space-time is treated as a unified phenomenon with "thickness" that can be metrically determined by Einsteinian physics. That's why some people can age faster than others, if they are going faster, or are deeper in gravity wells. The fact that time passes at rates that are not pegged to each other, even just in this observable universe puts a pretty big crimp in the theory that time is an invariant phenomenon that exists whether the universe exists or not.
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.
Ah, now Gore3000's ghost has a name: "moral incumbency". Submit your proof of the existence of "moral incumbency" just under his, please. Everything about us is not determined by our prior physical states, unless you are getting your physics from the 17th century. Quantum effects are random, and quantum effects impinge on the macro-world--as, for example, by allowing you to communicate through transistor gates that attach you to the internet.
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.
Very interesting. Please submit your proof that quantum effects do not occur, and affect the outcome of thoughts, when neurons are fired off in your brain.
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?
Setting aside your inability to demonstrate the death of free will, let's try your argument out on tomatoes. Once upon a time humans did not eat tomatoes. How did humans come by the concept that tomatoes are delicious to eat? It wasn't in the genes. The genes do not have tomatos writ large upon them, just generalized taste buds. Obviously, if all behavior is a result of pre-existent conditions, there is no room in the universe for the totally unprecidented, taste-incombancy of tomatoes.
...
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?
Who am I to talk back to God? Oh, excuse me, I didn't know I was supposed to ask certain questions. If you don't want to asnwer don't. If you do, I'd like to understand how I can not steal an apple in a supermarket tomorrow if God knows that I will do it. If I don't steal an apple will God correct the outcome of the event in the 'book' of my life or will he throw the book away since it no longer corresponds to the reality?
Regards.
Still the person doing the hallucinationg exists. Now you are I can dream of other people in our sleep, but in the end someone is dreaming. Not the people in the dream, but the one doing the dreaming does exist. The 'I' here is the hallucinator, dreamer or thinker.
At any rate, even if you had a solid point--how is that a response? If you are going to proffer Berkelerian arguments, than your existence is being hallucinated regardless of whether or not there is an endless closed cycle of hallucination going on.
The point is that thought is independent of matter. That thought, in and of itself has existence. Now, I do not go as far as Descartes with this to make an entire philosphy from it, but this does seem to prove that thought exists independent of matter.
I don't believe it--prove it.
If thought doesn't prove the existence of the individual, does it not at least prove the existence of thought? Denying the existence of thought would be to deny the law of identity, and denying the law of identity would be to deny the possibility of proof. So it seems that "I think, therefore I am" has been reduced to "Think"!
I think I am. I can't prove it. But if I accept the axiom "I am that I am" that God asserts about himself in Scripture, then I can deduce that I am, at minimum, something that God thinks about. That's a pretty good start in my book.
Nothing about this particular axiomatic system or domain of discourse forces you to accept them. Our assurance about them are, in a sense, self-contained. That's rather the point of doing it in the first place, don't you see?
Yes! Thanks! Anything not self-containable must be rejected. Self-containability is one of the key points of Christian confessions of faith. For example:
II. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient...he is the alone foundation of all being...In his sight all things are open and manifest; his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature; so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain... -Westminster Confession of Faith
In various discussions on this forum, people have asked “How do you know which revelation is the true religion?” The only answer can be “The logically consistent self-contained ones”, and then start the process of elimination, just as we should do with all thought.
This is very thought provoking.
And headache-inducing.
But rewarding (if done in moderation).
Well sentiments are also something immaterial. Now I think you seem to agree with me that men at least have free will, that they can decide between different paths. If matter was the determinant of their decisions, then there would be no free will. Going back to conscience some people (very few IMHO) might commit a horrible crime and regret it the rest of their lives and even try to make up for it the rest of their lives. Clearly something, which could not be material because their 'nature' did not change, must have made them change their behavior. I call this conscience, others may call it something else, but regardless of the name it seems pretty clear to me that it is not material.
Isn't the tomato example refuted by saying that although "tomato" is not writ large in the genes, the ability to form concepts like "Hey, tomatoes might be delicious to eat!" is?
What happens if the now apparently randomness of quantum effects is resolved into non-random partially predictable patterns?
Sure. Isn't the morality example refuted by saying that although "incombant(transcendent, whatever) morality" is not writ large in the genes, various forms of tribal morality are. The generalized tendency to taste and the generalized tendency to feel and to sympathize and to become loyal and loving are both inherited for the same underlying reason--they have been fruitful for the genes of the creatures that manifested them.
What happens if the now apparently randomness of quantum effects is resolved into non-random partially predictable patterns?
I wouldn't take that one to the bank, but if so, you'd still have a lot of hurdles to get over. We have a proof of the four-color theorem, but nobody is absolutely convinced it's a proof, because it's the size of a couple of big books, and no one person is smart enough that take it in all at once. So is the four-color theorem proved or not? The jury is still out. IBM had to give up on JCL (the Job Control Language of the IBM 360s) because they got to the point in this megaproject where, no matter how much money and manpower IBM threw into the project, every bug they fixed produced 1.3, usually worse, bugs. We refer to this generally as the problem of unmastered complexity, and you could take it, at its extremes, as a sort of a weak analogy to Godel's theorem (Which, by the way, represents another, distinct problem for the thesis of a perfectly computable, predestined universe).
Even if you could compute the universe in theory, you likely couldn't do it in fact, because the machine big enough for the job would suck up all the available resources it wants to compute about.
So the net effect of these, and other similar problems from formal mathematics, is just as if quantum uncertainty exists. If you have no hope of completely solving (cooking, math jocks like to say) a tree structured predictive matrix into which the entire current configuration of the universe is modeled, than you cannot say it is predictable with formal certainty.
In minature, one might model this argument on a chessboard: even though the game is putatively a perfect information game, with no element of chance, as a practical matter, since humans aren't perfect computing machines with infinite resources, the effects are, in some measure, the same as tossing dice, when you select a move from a variety of moves available to you.
So, what is the value of pre-destination, if you have no hope of computing it, or demonstrating it? This is like arguments about religious issues. Sure its possible, but its irrelevant to science, so we might as well proceed as if we had free will, for that is the only potentially useful assumption.
Prove it. I think they are manifestations of chemical responses to enzymes released by certain triggers in the environment.
Now I think you seem to agree with me that men at least have free will, that they can decide between different paths. If matter was the determinant of their decisions, then there would be no free will.
No. Uncertainty means free will, and quantum means uncertainty. You must refute the quantum theory before you can reasonably put this argument on the modern table. As the rest of this post is predicated on this assumption, I'll end the argument here.
I don't believe it--prove it.
If thought doesn't prove the existence of the individual, does it not at least prove the existence of thought? Denying the existence of thought would be to deny the law of identity, and denying the law of identity would be to deny the possibility of proof. So it seems that "I think, therefore I am" has been reduced to "Think"!
To my knowledge, I am not required to accept any statement you have made here on any known formal grounds. The law of identity is a tool of formal logic. It is not a rule the entire universe is forced to attend to. Try explainng the 2-slit experiment for individual bucky balls while clinging to the law of identity. Try resolving the sentence "This sentence is false" while clinging to the law of identity.
I think I am. I can't prove it. But if I accept the axiom "I am that I am" that God asserts about himself in Scripture, then I can deduce that I am, at minimum, something that God thinks about. That's a pretty good start in my book.
I rest my case. You are entitled to believe anything you wish. Providing proof is the question at issue here, however.
Nothing about this particular axiomatic system or domain of discourse forces you to accept them. Our assurance about them are, in a sense, self-contained. That's rather the point of doing it in the first place, don't you see?
Yes! Thanks! Anything not self-containable must be rejected. Self-containability is one of the key points of Christian confessions of faith. For example: ...
Um. Well, that wasn't the point I was making. I accept many other things aside from mathematically rigorous domains of discourse, and the axiomatic logics that might apply to them. It is merely that I don't assign them formal certainty. I accept them provisionally.
...
I am highly suspicious that a bible that condemns jews as christ-killers for all of time is to be considered any more highly "logical" than Islam, for example.
Still the person doing the hallucinationg exists. Now you are I can dream of other people in our sleep, but in the end someone is dreaming. Not the people in the dream, but the one doing the dreaming does exist. The 'I' here is the hallucinator, dreamer or thinker.
You have in no manner refuted either the conjecture that the hallucinator exists outside our universe, or the conjecture that the hallucinator is part of a pair of mutual hallucinators. You have merely restated your position, with which I continue to demur.
If you can't prove you aren't the product of an hallucination, you also can't prove that the hallucinator isn't herself hallucinated by a hallucination, ad infinitum.
At any rate, even if you had a solid point--how is that a response? If you are going to proffer Berkelerian arguments, than your existence is being hallucinated regardless of whether or not there is an endless closed cycle of hallucination going on.
The point is that thought is independent of matter. That thought, in and of itself has existence. Now, I do not go as far as Descartes with this to make an entire philosphy from it, but this does seem to prove that thought exists independent of matter.
I'm sorry, this is not the "rousing good argument" room, you want the "being hit on the head lessons" room. Kindly point out where this proof is published, as I originally asked. The only evidence you can present that thought exists is embedded in material, as it is material that constitute the essential basic ingredient of evidence. You cannot have evidence that is not material, unless, in obedience to God's law, you are intent on ridding the world of witches, in which case, spectral evidence (the dreams of children) is accepted by the court.
I do not doubt my own existence--I embrace it joyfully, most of the time. That does not mean I am forced to take that existence as a predicate of some formal ontological argument that attempts to impose some pretty sweeping claims about the nature of existence, as if they are unquestionable.
My existence satisfied me whether it is an hallucination or not, so I am not obviously compelled to examine whether its an hallucination or not. It's a moot point. All of physics works exactly the same way, I still have exactly the same problems to solve, using the same tools, whether the universe is a gossimmer whisp of some sleeping God's delight, or matter ground out of a quantum explosion 16 billion years ago.
Lev, don't take it so personally. I don't have any objection to your asking questions. I have asked the same question myself. The question is so strikingly similar to one in a 2000 year-old writing that I decided to answer by quoting that writing. The answer to the question in that writing is in the form a rhetorical question. The rhetorical question was apparently intended to highlight the category distinction between Creator and creature, and to illustrate, because of that huge distinction, the futility and may I say, absurdity of the premise of the question. That fundamental category difference is the reason there is no contradiction between God's predestination and our free will, and consequently a lack of our own justification of our acts of evil.
Don't steal the apple from the supermarket, because if you do, you will be held responsible for not loving God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and loving your neighbor as yourself. You have the ability to choose to do just exactly what you want to do, uncompelled and unconstrained by external or internal compulsion or constraint. And God, Who is a completely different category of Being, has already predetermined what you will do. Both are true. We cannot thwart God's will, and thus whether we steal the apple or don't, the book of our life will not need to be re-written.
"And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books."
Revelation 20;12
Cordially,
This first part is an assumption. The second makes sense only with qualification. The objects of science are not an oracle that tell you what is a problem or even which problems are the ones to solve. It is interesting how the popular consciousness is molded by the science ideal of the 18th century.
Well you may be right about that, LogicWings. Maybe only "little children" can understand such things.
Quantum states are not nothing. They are an aspect of the PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, are they not? If they "affect the outcome of thoughts" as you say, then is there not some contingent, physical relationship between the the effect and its cause?
Besides, even taking the randomness of quantum mechanics into accout, how do you obtain personal volition from random, impersonal, physical conditions and forces?
I'm not sure what to make of your statements regarding moral incumbency. I can't tell whether you think there really are real moral obligation or not. Do you think that are there things that we "ought" or "ought not" do?
Cordially,
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