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.
Alas, all that complicated writing, and it finally dribbles down to this -- a statement for which his dreary Seattle-style writing offers no basis -- not at all surprising, given that his conclusion is baseless anyway.
Sigh. Why didn't he just limit it to this, and save us the trouble of trying to wade through all of the turgid pap that preceded it?
Not I. I first learned how to say five "Hail Mary's", Glory Be's, Confiteor's, Acts of Contrition and Our Father's. I was then told that the Earth was created in 6 days. I was told that I was born with the "stain" of original sin and had to be baptized or I would go to hell if I died. When I began to ask questions about the age of fossils and how they contradicted Biblical teaching, I was told that only the faithful go to heaven.
What is wrong with this picture? I was not born believing that evolution was a "fact." I discovered that natural selection made abundant sense by explaining why some species exist and why some go extinct. It it a marvelous interplay of genetics, the environment and selective pressures exerted on organisms which influence how they either adapt or do not over time. What evolution really speaks to is time. It does not alienate those who wish to still give God the credit although I do not. It is simply a science which is empirically based and seeks to answer questions. Some questions are answered, some are not. But, none are turned away- - -even those dealing with how the ball got rolling.
To prove it you have to provide a definition first. What axioms are you positing as prerequisite for God? It is hard to be consistent without that context.
And it should be bloody obvious that the requirement for proof is to establish a non-null prior for God. Without that prior the belief is, by definition, irrational. I, for one, am very careful about not making irrational assertions, though most of the population doesn't seem to have this impediment.
Apparently the point is missing you. It is trivial to prove that it COULD have happened, regardless of whether it DID happen. By establishing a non-null prior, it becomes rational to believe your assertion that you fell down the steps as a child taken by itself.
And as is in rampant evidence, people make up bullshit stories about things all the time, either through stupidity, malice, or simple ignorance. In the absence of a non-null prior, we have NO reason to believe a word of it.
is fantasy---
micro evolution...
is manipulating---
fabricating(re-wording/working)---reality/science(creation)!
Evolution is the taproot...holy grail of liberalism/atheism/utopia...delusians!
To put it another way: I try to hang out with animals to the fullest extent possible. Mostly I just enjoy their company -- however brief, as usually seems the case when it comes to wildlife.
In dealing with domestic animals however -- dogs, cats, and horses form my experiential base -- it has been my experience that they react/respond, not to language, but to signals. Some of these signals may be verbal. Some may be physical cues.
The point is: Reaction to a signal does not necessarily prima facie demonstrate advanced cognitive abilities, let alone language interpretation skills.
Thus it seems to me that "reason," as you appear to describe it, cannot be a "body of knowledge." Rather, I'd say it's the preeminent tool for the qualification of what can pass for knowledge, as mediated by logic and experience.
Based on my experience, in general, animals do not exactly excel in the kind of intellectual operation that depends on language for its intelligible communication.
So if you were to tell me that there really isn't any real distinction of consequence as between humans and other animals (which is the "reasonable" conclusion to draw from Darwinist theory), then I'd have to say:
Show me: I'm just dying to see your evidence. Hopefully, what passes for evidence with you will not be wholly speculative, but would take actual life observation and experience into account....
You say that God is an imaginary idea.
I aver that you could not say this if you knew Him as many of us here do. If you knew Him, you would understand that He is and that fact in its perfection answers the questions: What is the meaning of life and Why am I here and Why bother.
If you knew Him, you would understand that there is no courage without fear, no love without hate, no joy without sorrow, no goodness without evil. Our opportunity to be born anew is in contrast to what we once were and is manifest in us not by power, not by might, not by reason - but by the Spirit.
We become proof that He is.
If you want to know if He exists, then I strongly suggest you ask Him. If you are one of His, you'll hear His reply - and if not, then you never were. Not everyone has “ears to hear.”
Same one as always...
As he watched, the moon rose, there was a meteor shower and a display of the aurora borealis, a cock crowed thrice, it thundered, a flock of geese flew by in the shape of a swastika, and a giant hand wrote Mene, mene, what's it you? across the sky in giant silver letters. Suddenly Frito had the overpowering feeling that he had come to a turning point, that an old chapter in his life was ending and a new one beginning. "Mush, you brute," he said, kicking the pack animal in the kidneys, and as the great quadruped staggered forward, tailfirst into the black East, there came from deep in the surrounding forest the sound of some great bird being briefly, but noisily, ill.
:^)
Yes, but you'll have missed your deadline ;)
The opposite of Reason is "I believe in God because my parents did". That's not reasonable.
For whatever reason, I have a sneaky suspicion that this is exactly why many, if not most, people believe. Church is just sort of what you do on Sunday morning, a kind of reflex action. A critical, introspective examination of the basis for one's faith is never really undertaken - people believe what they believe because that's what they were brought up to believe. The person who does come to a particular faith by introspection and reflection is a rare bird indeed.
Well, it really depends a great deal on how you define "God". That being said, no, one probably cannot disprove the existence of God, so long as the definition of "God" is even slightly clever.
Of course, that's a bit of a slender reed upon which to hang one's faith. Not being able to disprove something isn't much of a reason, in and of itself, to believe it's true - the believer will probably wish to seek something a bit more substantial than just that. After all, I can't disprove the existence of Santa Claus either, but that's probably not quite enough to persuade you to believe in him ;)
Where a thing can neither be proved nor disproved, it has been proven to be a matter of faith.
I don't know if you really need to prove such a thing - it's pretty much true by definition...
While the author does not clearly state his atheist perspective, it is pretty clear that he considers religion, per se to be the problem, not merely certain fanatical adherents of one particular religion known as Islam:
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.
Thus, he makes a false distinction between reason and religion, and he further characterizes religion (again, per se) to mean murdering and subjugating in the name of some 'invisible spiritual entity'. Excuse me if I draw the obvious conclusion that the writer is hostile to ALL religion, not just Islamic terrorists.
As for the 'cult of rationalism', this simply describes the mentality of Randians, followers of Md. Murray O'Hare, the publishers of Skeptic magazine and many outspoken atheistic scientists who tout human reason as the highest standard in all things and often like to spell it with a capital 'R'. I do not mean that there is an organized cult or official religion, nor was it meant to be derogatory. The simple fact is that there are many people who, lacking a belief in God, substitute Reason as their god and habitually castigate all religions and all religious persons for the atrocious acts of a few extremists. However, they would be loathe to take the blame, as atheists, for all the atrocities committed by atheists throughout history (French Revolution, Marxism, Marque de Sade, etc.) Gee, THAT would be unfair, wouldn't it?
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