Anti-fundie virus

[David]

Blowing up a nightclub in Bali and then ranting that people should "convert to Islam" if they don't want to join the deceased doesn't count? The Crusades, Inquisitions, and Manifest Destiny don't count?

I was talking about harassment, not murder. There is a difference between a Jehovah's Witness coming to you door and bothering you with their nonsense, and a Jehovah's Witness tring to convert you at gunpoint. Those bombers used religion to justify their hatred. Anyone willing to kill another human being will justify it in one way or another.

And how do you know this hatred would still be there if not for the religion? Should we consider it sheer coincidence that members of certain religions have an historically greater tendency toward violence?

How do you know that it won't still be there if there is no religion? Some people like to bully their way through life and hurt other people. That is a simple fact of life. Some people find a way to vent their violance and get away with it by claiming they did it for a good cause ( in their mind anyway.) Many times it is religion. Somes times it is because they claim they were wronged, or because they have been repressed through life. The point is that they will find an outlit for their hatred. It might be because they think they are superior to other because of their race or their beliefs or any number of reasons. Hitler gave the outlit to the German people anger after WWI by telling them they had been wronged by the Jews and other Europeans, it is still not an excuse for murder. Just like saying that we have a right to kill all fundies because they have repressed the world intellectually is not an excuse.

[Darth Wong]

Quite a few. It undoubtedly helped that they were exposed to other points of view before becoming too old. Why do you think so many fundies insist on home-schooling their kids?

Because they wish to instill their system of beliefs, whether right or wrong, on their children.

And because their system of beliefs cannot withstand criticism, so it must be taught without interference from outside sources.

If every school taught creation and allowed none to question it, wouldn't you do the same with your children?

Since they would be lying by teaching an idiotic superstition as if it were a scientific theory, I would expose the lie for what it is and teach my children the truth. However, I would not pull them out of school; socialization is too important.

Saying that someone will or won't reject or accept something based on their upbringing is wrong. You might as well say that if someone is brought up in an abusive home, and if they are never exposed to anything different, then they will consider that to be the proper way of parenting.

Most do. That is why the children of abusive parents are usually abusive.

i personally know this is untrue. My father's life was a living hell until he moved out of his house, but he has never been anything but loving and kind to me and my siblings.

So? A minority can overcome such influences; that does not prove that the influences are not harmful or powerful.

[Darth Wong]

And how do you know this hatred would still be there if not for the religion? Should we consider it sheer coincidence that members of certain religions have an historically greater tendency toward violence?

How do you know that it won't still be there if there is no religion?

The religion teaches hate (read the Bible, see the actions of the God they praise). Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that its removal would lessen hate. Would you make the same argument of, say, the Nazis? That there was no need to eliminate the movement because it was really just an outlet for peoples' individual feelings?

Some people like to bully their way through life and hurt other people. That is a simple fact of life. Some people find a way to vent their violance and get away with it by claiming they did it for a good cause ( in their mind anyway.) Many times it is religion. Somes times it is because they claim they were wronged, or because they have been repressed through life. The point is that they will find an outlit for their hatred.

No, there is no point. You are stating your conclusion as a fact. Who said that the violent actions of individuals are never influenced or induced by large social movements as opposed to individual leanings?

It might be because they think they are superior to other because of their race or their beliefs or any number of reasons. Hitler gave the outlit to the German people anger after WWI by telling them they had been wronged by the Jews and other Europeans, it is still not an excuse for murder. Just like saying that we have a right to kill all fundies because they have repressed the world intellectually is not an excuse.

I'm not saying it's OK to kill all the fundies. But your defense of fundies is massively flawed, David. To minimize their negative impact upon the world is the wrong way to argue against this "fundie killer virus" idea.

[David]

I'm not tring to minimize what fundies do in this world, whether it be good or bad. What am tring to do is establish a cause and effect relationship.


Everyone seems to be saying that people are bad because religion tells them to be bad. I see it a different way. People are bad and they use religion as an excuse. They cause religion to be bad.


Forgive me for comparing this to Hitler once again, but the soldiers that followed him were not forced to carry out genocide, they wanted to do this and they chose to murder people.


It is the same way with religion. How can two different people claim to follow the same religion and act differently? How can I have a peaceful follower of Islam living next to me, and then see thousands of people in the streets of the Middle East screaming for my blood, while in the next breath claiming the same religion?

How can I see some Christian missionaries die while tring to get medical supplies to people in third world contries, while on the other hand seeing people like Jerry Farwell saying he couldn't care less if all of them died?

If people are bad it is becuse they choose to be, not because they are told to be.

[Darth Wong]

I'm not tring to minimize what fundies do in this world, whether it be good or bad. What am tring to do is establish a cause and effect relationship.

Everyone seems to be saying that people are bad because religion tells them to be bad. I see it a different way. People are bad and they use religion as an excuse. They cause religion to be bad.

Black/white fallacy. Both societal groups and individual leanings are influences; it's not limited to one or the other. But only the former matters for the purpose of discussing the idea of the thread; it would be morally acceptable to eliminate a movement if you had the magic power to do so; it is not morally acceptable to eliminate the people who happen to be in it, unless they've already committed a crime.

Ironically enough, your argument makes it more acceptable to punish fundies, not less. By claiming that their hatred is individual rather than being "inherited" from a social movement, you eliminate the argument that it is wrong to judge them as a group rather than individuals (since they all individually choose to hate and be uselessly stupid, thus making them all individually guilty and validating the original person's argument). I can only assume that this was an unintended consequence of your argument.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

1.) It's never Stone Thrower vs. Tank. It's Stone Thrower vs. Infantry with Tank support. And someone throwing a stone can kill or injury an infantryman.

They throw the stones at the tank. Not the infantry.

Well, that's just stupid.

This has more to do with police assists suicide than with combat.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

A couple of points:

1.) It's never Stone Thrower vs. Tank. It's Stone Thrower vs. Infantry with Tank support. And someone throwing a stone can kill or injury an infantryman.

Even Israeli human-rights groups acknowledge that there are hundreds of pointless killings of children. See some of the links on the index I pointed out to Marina. We're talking about 6 year olds on bicycles, and roadside bombs being deliberately planted by the Israelis. The Geneva Convention prohibits the use of any weapon in occupied territory which is too indiscriminate to target combatants without also killing nearby civilians; the Israelis are in such blatant breach of this protocol that people seem to forget that it exists.

I'm not going to deny the Israelis seem less than concerned about civilian causualties. Hell, even their own government has said their soldiers are trigger happy. However, on the scale of morality, not worrying about civilian casualties is still better than targeting casualties.

2.) It's not Good vs. Evil, it's Smart vs. Dumb. If all you have is a stone and the enemy has a machine gun you have two options. 1.) Put the stone down and walk away (Smart) or hurl that stone and risk retaliation (Dumb.) It's not like anyone expects the Israelis to put down their guns and start throwing stones back.

If protesters did that to the police in North America and the police gunned them down, we would consider it an outrage. If it happens in Palestine, it's OK?

Protesters in North America generally don't blow up buses.

[/quote]

3.) If three Palestinians die for every Israeli killed, then the best way to reduce Palestinian deaths is to stop killing Israelis.

And accept perpetual subjugation.[/quote]

Three points:

1.) Outside oil shieks, the Arabs living in Isreal have a better standard of living than any other Arab population in the Middle East. They should be so luck to be 'subjagated.'

2.) If they don't like Israeli rule they can live in their own country. It's called Jordan.

3.) One word: Ghandi. Passive resistance works faster, is more reliable and causes less casualties than terrorism.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Does anyone else find it sick that MKSheppard is comparing the witch trials, inquisition, the holocaust, etc. to not being able to buy a toy gun?

And that's not all....I remember when you could actually buy a school
lunch at school with CASH....now they don't even accept CASH anymore...
you have to punch in a Student Identification Number to BUY food at
School......

So fucking what?

And Strowey, do us all a favor and read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO.....

ESpecially this quote:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things
have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night
to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive
and had to say good-bye to his family?

They would have shot first. When they came for you did your guns protect you?

[C.S.Strowbridge]

So let's do some shouting.


To those who voted in favor the virus;

My, my, my, what sick fucks art thou. By admitting that fundies, for the unforgivable crime of disagreeing with you, are deserving of death, you have lowered yourself to their level. You, dear forumites, are now bigots and purveyors of a far worse depravity, and when the virus comes it will be right and fitting that you shall be the first against the wall.

Have you read the Bible?

We're not saying, 'Disagree with us and die.' We're saying, 'Advocate the killing of all those that disagree with you and you forfiet your right to life.'

There's a huge difference.

[Darth Wong]

I'm not going to deny the Israelis seem less than concerned about civilian causualties. Hell, even their own government has said their soldiers are trigger happy. However, on the scale of morality, not worrying about civilian casualties is still better than targeting casualties.

Unless one is merely masquerading as the other. When the Israelis planted a roadside bomb in a residential neighbourhood, how was that any different than a Palestinian planting a car bomb? When it went off and "accidentally" killed 5 kids walking by, did you accept that? Would you accept a Palestinian saying that when a Palestinian car bomb goes off, it "accidentally" kills bystanders? That was pure terrorism, and as usual for Israeli terrorism, no one was punished. The media in North America quietly broadcasts only half of the story: Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism are people; we see their reactions, hear their stories. Palestinian victims of Israeli terrorism are numbers; we hear about their "accidental" deaths, and we never see their faces or the faces of their loved ones.

If protesters did that to the police in North America and the police gunned them down, we would consider it an outrage. If it happens in Palestine, it's OK?

Protesters in North America generally don't blow up buses.

They also haven't had their kids murdered by the police, or had the army plant bombs near their homes. If the army planted a bomb in your neighbourhood that killed your kids and then trigger-happy soldiers fired upon the funeral procession the next day just for good measure, would you be tempted to engage in violent action against the government?

1.) Outside oil shieks, the Arabs living in Isreal have a better standard of living than any other Arab population in the Middle East. They should be so luck to be 'subjagated.'

I'm talking about the Arabs living in the "Occupied Territories" part of Israel, ie- Apartheid Israel.

2.) If they don't like Israeli rule they can live in their own country. It's called Jordan.

Nice. If you want good treatment, get the fuck out and let the invaders win.

3.) One word: Ghandi. Passive resistance works faster, is more reliable and causes less casualties than terrorism.

True. Both sides have an over-eagerness to use violence, because both sides subscribe to violent religious attitudes. I don't see how this exonerates the Israelis, though.

[Coyote]

Oh I love this, the way he twists my words back upon themselves until they resemble a pretzel. Well played Coyote.

Why, thank you, but please notice-- I did not twist your words back around on you, but on those who would wipe out all the Fundamentalists. Unless, of course, I struck a nerve?

NOWHERE ARE WE CLAIMING THE MORAL HIGH GROUND! I even stated it in my opening post: Releasing the virus would be genocide and therefore immoral.... The question is: knowing that it will help the surviving prtion of humanity, do we do it anyway?

I have heard arguments that athiest beliefs have never caused slaughter and death on a scale of religious fundamentalists, this makes athiesm morally superior.

You also just assume that while the virus is immoral, releasing it will help the rest of mankind, so it's only "wink-wink immoral" and once the Fundies are gone there'll be no dissenting voices, so we'll have "the morality of the victor" to look back upon, and pat ourselves on the back.

Did you expect easy, comfy answers from this type of question?

[Coyote]

Question.

How is this mess the PLO's fault? I mean, which group of people forcibly moved in on a piece of territory they had no legal right to, exiled half it's population, and now subjects that population to brutal oppresssion, which in turn helps brew the feelings that fuel the bombings that get the mess blamed on the victims?

Israel came into existance in a stretch of land that had once been theirs, and they were forcibly evicted from following the Bar-Kokhva revolt of 169CE.

Jews, tormented by centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe, decided that the best thing for them to do was to go back to their ancestral home and try to found a state where they could live in peace. The Zionist Movement (so named for Mount Zion, of Jeruslame) became popular and for decades people moved to Palestine, legally purchasing land from absentee Ottoman landlords.

Arabs living on these lands (technically illegally, as squatters) were uprooted and fierce riots ensued. In Hebron, 550 Jews were knifed to death by rampaging mobs for the crime of buying land.

In 1948, after the horrors of the Holocaust were made apparant to the world, the formation of the nation of Israel was proclaimed by United Nations vote. Israel was initially divided roughly in half between the Arabs and Jews, but the Arabs rejected this vote of the General Assembly and declared war with the stated intent to "push the Jews into the Sea". By the way... no other emergent nation (ie, the United States, Canada, Australia...) asked any world body to deliberate on the rightness and wrongness of their land grabs, they just took what they wanted and didn't give the natives any chance to vote at all.

While Israel tried to accept the borders of its new land, the Jews were subject to constant shelling and terrorism by the neighbors, even when no official wars were declared.

Through all the centuries of Jewish dispersal, the desire to return to Israel was always there; the ancient claim to the homeland never faded. While David ben-Gurion, the father of modern Israel tried to extend the hand of friendship to the Arabs-- as stated in the Declaration of Independence-- the neighbors were trying to kill them as quickly as possible.

The morality of 1956, 1967, and 1973-- and the importation of European style nationalism in the area-- are other subjects of debate.

[data_link]

To David

You stated that the human population would be substantially reduced. In this were obviously not talking about a small segment of the human population

You don't agree that there are a lot of fundies in this world? Do you think that the people who advocate or actually commit mass murder for not adhering to their strict beliefs are only a tiny blip on the radar of humanity? I advise you to actually read the news sometime.

Do you think these massive organizations are supported by a few bigots? They are supported by hundreds of thousands of people donating their time and money to a good cause. Why would they do this if they were bigots in the first place?

Because it allows them to preach their intolerant beliefs to innocent children under the guise of doing something good for people. This was a simple admission of the fact that even evil people can do good things - would you prefer that I used the classic black/white fallacy to make things simpler for you?

I suggest you open a dictionary, because your idea of a fundamentalist is skewed. A fundamentalist is anyone who believes in the strict adherence to a set of core beliefs. Am I a fundie then? Yes! I have a set of values I am absolutely not will to compromise or change just because I meet someone with a different set of values that calls me a bigot. Do I think I am superior to others because of this, yes. I am absolutely opposed to murder, and I do think I am superior to anyone who think it is okay to murder someone as long as they get to do the choosing

Incorrect. A fundie is someone who believes in the bible as the literal historical record, prophecy, and law of God. You cannot possibly be a fundie (as much as you sound like one), because you are absolutely opposed to murder under any circumstances, whereas a fundie supports murder of adulterers, homosexuals, disobedient children, etc. as outlined in the bible.

How odd, you stated at first that this wasn't about morality, then you turn around and justify your actions because you say fundies are immoral

No, I justify my actions because fundies cause undeniable harm to other people and killing them will stop them from doing this. I have accepted a priori that this is an immoral course of action, and then ask if this course of action should be undertaken anyway because of the benefit to everyone else. Which you would know if you were actually reading my posts.

Did you ever stop to think that fundies consider you immoral for tring to force them to allow gay marriages? As far as someone being beat goes, anyone with a desire for violence will justify it somehow. Whether it be for Jesus, Allah, or " for the greater good of humanity." As to someone being reject for their beliefs, I've seen friends rejected by their families because " they found God."

Fundies consider everyone immoral. They also believe that morality is defined as obedience to a God who considers it moral to kill someone for not being circumcised, regardless of what humanity has to say about it. The difference between fundies who beat people for being gay and secular humanists who beat people for being gay is that the fundie is obeying their moral code while the secular humanist is not.

What I see here is a coin with two sides. The coin being hatred for another because of the beliefs that they hold, and the two sides being the fundies willing to kill for their beliefs like the people that kill abortion doctors and like the Islamic Infada. On the other side of the coin I see you, willing to kill anyone not willing to conform to your set of ideals and beliefs, whether those beliefs are right or wrong

Ah, moral relativism. So you believe that fundies are just as moral as everyone else because they believe what they are doing is right, and that no one is any more right than the other, except that somehow you are more moral than everyone else and in a position to judge their morals because your morals are absolutely correct... see where I'm going with this? By denying the existence of absolute morality, you make logical argument impossible. The fact is, one of us is purporting a moral code that advocates killing anyone who doesn't obey an amoral God, the other is arguing that because the first group is causing objective, verifiable harm that it ought to be prevented from doing so, even if the action required is inherently immoral. Our arguments are not analogous.

Did you ever stop to consider what the other side might do?

<snip>

I am well aware of the fact that there are many people willing to commit genocide for their beliefs - that does not change a fact that one of us has a valid argument - that fundies cause objective measurabe harm to everyone else - while the others do not. But let's take this rediculous scenario for a moment - 2 viruses, 1 in the hands of one of the people you described above, on in the hands of either you or me. If the virus is in my hands, none of that viruses are released, because we both have an interest in self-preservation. Classic mutually assured destruction. But in your hands, their virus is released, because they know you consider it absolutely immoral to commit genocide and you are not willing to do it even when it is in the greater good of humanity. You see, humanity needs people that are willing to commit immoral acts when nessecary, because otherwise it cant survive.

Perhaps a new scenario would satisfy you. How about, "Everyone dies who does not act rationally."

No, that would be literally everyone on the planet. One cannot say it is in the greater good of humanity for humanity to cease to exist.

If you were truely serious about making the world a better place, your original question would have read,



"Would the world be a better place if every person whom had a desire to kill or hurt another died of an engineered plaque?"


I don't think you would have had a single NO vote, but you didn't do that. You asked if the world would be better if a certain, signifigant portion of the human population was wiped out for no other reason than disagreeing with you.

Congratulations, David, you have just admitted that you advocate the death of every single person on this board.

Your axioms:
1. Everyone on the board would vote yes to the question: "Would the world be a better place if every person whom had a desire to kill or hurt another died of an engineered plaque?"

Everyone on the board includes you.

A YES vote indicated a desire for everyone on the planet who desires to kill or hurt people to die

Everyone on the board is included in that set, because everyone wants a particular subset of the human race to die (as indicated by their YES bote)

You want everyone in that set to die.

Therefore, you want everyone on this board to die.

So before anyone marches of with the righteousness of murder for a good cause and a Heil data_link! on their lips, just remember that Hitler and every other dictator throughout history would be proud of you, and that you are nothing but the other side of the coin of hatred.

Your appeal to ridicule does nothing to support your argument.

Oh, and to Vympel, sorry, but the fundies probably won't respond to the threat of force until you have demonstrated that you actually do have such a virus AND are willing to use it, a demonstration that would nessecarily involve genocide (otherwise, they'll think, he's just trying to scare us by infecting a few people, but he'll never release it wourldwide).

[Pu-239]

Arabs living on these lands (technically illegally, as squatters) were uprooted and fierce riots ensued. In Hebron, 550 Jews were knifed to death by rampaging mobs for the crime of buying land.
.

WTF!
By that reasoning people in america would be pushed out because we are squatters, even though it happened many generations ago.

Besides, didn't the Jews have a choice of settling in a less populated area?

[data_link]

Oh I love this, the way he twists my words back upon themselves until they resemble a pretzel. Well played Coyote.

Why, thank you, but please notice-- I did not twist your words back around on you, but on those who would wipe out all the Fundamentalists. Unless, of course, I struck a nerve?

NOWHERE ARE WE CLAIMING THE MORAL HIGH GROUND! I even stated it in my opening post: Releasing the virus would be genocide and therefore immoral.... The question is: knowing that it will help the surviving prtion of humanity, do we do it anyway?

I have heard arguments that athiest beliefs have never caused slaughter and death on a scale of religious fundamentalists, this makes athiesm morally superior.

You also just assume that while the virus is immoral, releasing it will help the rest of mankind, so it's only "wink-wink immoral" and once the Fundies are gone there'll be no dissenting voices, so we'll have "the morality of the victor" to look back upon, and pat ourselves on the back.

Did you expect easy, comfy answers from this type of question?

No, I didn't expect comfy answers to this type of question - that's why I asked, because I wanted to see how you would react to a real moral delimma, as opposed to the false delimmas offered up by most of the fundies on this board. Nor do I have any delusions about someone who does this being looked upon favorably by humanity - more likely, he'll end up like Ender Wiggin, with humanity taking a thousand years to forgive him, if ever.

[Coyote]

A typo: I said that 550 Jews were killed in Hebron; the numbers were 133 killed and another 339 wounded, for a total of 476, all killed between 23 and 29 August of 1929. On top of that I added a single instance on the 23rd where 59 Jewish people were killed, all of them families in one ransacked apartment complex. Many were tortured and their bodies dismembered. The numbers, added up as all dead, came to about 550, where I got my number.

I apologize for my error, I have since checked my sources (Martin-Gilbert Routledge "Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Merton College/Oxford, 1996)[/b]

[Darth Wong]

Israel came into existance in a stretch of land that had once been theirs, and they were forcibly evicted from following the Bar-Kokhva revolt of 169CE.

Irrelevant. That is ancient history.

Jews, tormented by centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe, decided that the best thing for them to do was to go back to their ancestral home and try to found a state where they could live in peace. The Zionist Movement (so named for Mount Zion, of Jeruslame) became popular and for decades people moved to Palestine, legally purchasing land from absentee Ottoman landlords.

Arabs living on these lands (technically illegally, as squatters) were uprooted and fierce riots ensued. In Hebron, 550 Jews were knifed to death by rampaging mobs for the crime of buying land.

You've never heard of squatters' rights? If you're living uncontested on a piece of land for long enough, it's yours. They rioted against people who were trying to force them out of their own homes. They attacked a de facto invasion. Their tactics may have been immoral, but the Israelis committed their own fair share of massacres. Do not whitewash their pre-1947 actions; they virtually invented modern terrorism.

In 1948, after the horrors of the Holocaust were made apparant to the world, the formation of the nation of Israel was proclaimed by United Nations vote. Israel was initially divided roughly in half between the Arabs and Jews, but the Arabs rejected this vote of the General Assembly and declared war with the stated intent to "push the Jews into the Sea".

Of course. You live in a country for generations and then somebody comes along and tells you that millions of people want to come and forcibly evict half of you from your homes in order to satisfy a ridiculous two thousand year old land claim, and you don't understand why they said no?

By the way... no other emergent nation (ie, the United States, Canada, Australia...) asked any world body to deliberate on the rightness and wrongness of their land grabs, they just took what they wanted and didn't give the natives any chance to vote at all.

Which was immoral. However, we now give the natives full rights (in fact, more rights than anyone else). Can Israel say the same? No. In fact, they treat the Arab occupants of that land as an infestation. Arabs in the occupied territories have no rights, and Israel refuses to even extend the Geneva Convention to them.

Through all the centuries of Jewish dispersal, the desire to return to Israel was always there; the ancient claim to the homeland never faded. While David ben-Gurion, the father of modern Israel tried to extend the hand of friendship to the Arabs-- as stated in the Declaration of Independence-- the neighbors were trying to kill them as quickly as possible.

That is the traditional response to invasions. I don't see why it is so shocking here.

The UN has a severe problem; it likes to draw lines on maps and expect the people living on the lands demarcated by those lines to quietly accept them. It did this in Israel/Palestine, it did this in Bosnia/Serbia, it did this in India/Pakistan, and every time, it has been a disaster.

[Coyote]

Any time a nation is made, there are attacks and atrocities, and both sides end up smelling like shit. The victor gets to whitewash everything. Despite my defense of the right of Israel to exist, I am not afraid to admit that with the results of the 1967 war, we've buried ourselves in an anthill.

The slogan of Peace Now is "Get out of the Terrirtories, get back to ourselves". They make a persuave moral argument that considering the way the Jews have been made to suffer through history, we of all people should know better than to do this to others. David Ben-Gurion, after the 1967 war, was asked his opinion about what to do with the territory. He said, (I paraphrase) "Give it back, because otherwise we will find ourselves having to live in dominition over these people". If only we'd listened.

At this point, the two-state solution is the accepted one and the details must be worked out. The Allon plan and the Barak initiative were "Swiss Cheese plans" according to the Palestinians; they would have gotten 97% of the land but with no control over airspace, Israeli-controlled 'bypass roads' through the territory requiring internl passports to cross... in other words, a pale joke of a state.

The current administrations of both people have too much at stake in preserving the status quo of combat: Sharon and Arafat, they are like the fat industrialists of WW1 who saw no reason to end the war as long as they were getting rich. Castles built upon a mountain of bodies in a sea of blood; only by extending the bridge of honest justice to both can they get out of this mire. Secure nations and peaceful borders for both...

[C.S.Strowbridge]

I'm not going to deny the Israelis seem less than concerned about civilian causualties. Hell, even their own government has said their soldiers are trigger happy. However, on the scale of morality, not worrying about civilian casualties is still better than targeting casualties.

Unless one is merely masquerading as the other. When the Israelis planted a roadside bomb in a residential neighbourhood, how was that any different than a Palestinian planting a car bomb?

I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the intended targets were Palestinian gunmen.

Again, it's a matter of matter of not caring about civilian casualties vs. targetting civilians. Neither is right, but one is less wrong than the other. In this case very slightly less wrong.

On the other hand, I have no problem with Palestinian gunmen abushing Israeli soldier. Soldier are legitimate targets.

If protesters did that to the police in North America and the police gunned them down, we would consider it an outrage. If it happens in Palestine, it's OK?

Protesters in North America generally don't blow up buses.

They also haven't had their kids murdered by the police, or had the army plant bombs near their homes. If the army planted a bomb in your neighbourhood that killed your kids and then trigger-happy soldiers fired upon the funeral procession the next day just for good measure, would you be tempted to engage in violent action against the government?[/quote]

And police in North American don't have to deal with suicide bombers. Don't have to deal with foreign trained terrorists on a weekly basis. Don't have to live with a legacy of violence against their people that's been going on for almost a century.

1.) Outside oil shieks, the Arabs living in Isreal have a better standard of living than any other Arab population in the Middle East. They should be so luck to be 'subjagated.'

I'm talking about the Arabs living in the "Occupied Territories" part of Israel, ie- Apartheid Israel.

Yeah? And I'm talking about Arabs who are smart enough to realize Israel is offering the best deal. Instead of dying for a myth (Palestine was ever an independent Arabian nation) they could join a nation that would let them vote, wouldn't force them to live under oppressive religious laws, etc.

There are more than a million Arabs living as Israeli citizens.

2.) If they don't like Israeli rule they can live in their own country. It's called Jordan.

Nice. If you want good treatment, get the fuck out and let the invaders win.

Oh fuck you, the Arabs living within Israel are treated better than Arabs living in Saudi Arabia. They don't have to leave, but it is a fucking option.

And, to make the point even more obvious, JORDAN = PALESTINE. It was created for the very purpose the PLO pretends to be fighting for. Maybe if they did a little historical research they'd figure that out.

And another point that needs to be made, Palestinians living the the West Bank and Gaza Strip were treated like shit by the Arabs when they were in control. And what did the Palestinians do about it? Blew up more Jewish buses.

No Israeli oppression (1921 - 39) = Dead Jews
Arabian oppression (1948-67) = Dead Jews
Israeli oppression (1967-present) = Dead Jews.
Accepting Israeli Rule (1948 - present) = Happy Palestinians.

But it's clear to me that the people in control (not Arafat) want Dead Jews more than they want Happy Palestinian.

3.) One word: Ghandi. Passive resistance works faster, is more reliable and causes less casualties than terrorism.

True. Both sides have an over-eagerness to use violence, because both sides subscribe to violent religious attitudes. I don't see how this exonerates the Israelis, though.

It's a matter of degress. Both sides use violence. Both side have extremists. And both sides have people who want peace.

But looking at it as part of a larger conflict you'll see this is part of a larger conflict. It's not Jews vs. Palestinians, it's not even Jews vs. Arabs. It's Jews vs. Muslims. Muslims hate Jews. Muslims also hate Christians, Hindus, Atheists, anyone who isn't Muslim, etc. And when you think Jew vs. Mulsim you can't think Religion vs. Religion, cause there is a larger percetage of Atheist Jews then there are Atheists in the population at large.

Also, it's a matter of how the two sides treat their own people. AFAIK, the only place in the Middle East where Arab woman can vote is Israel. You'll never have religious police beating woman and forcing them back into a burning building cause they're wearing the wrong clothes. You'll never see a woman burned to death cause she was raped (thus having sex outside marriage.) To be completely blunt, the Muslim's treatment of woman is unforgiveable and, in my mind, is reason enough to wipe the culture / religion / society off the face of the planet.

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Arabs living on these lands (technically illegally, as squatters) were uprooted and fierce riots ensued. In Hebron, 550 Jews were knifed to death by rampaging mobs for the crime of buying land.

Just a note, early Zionists bought unoccupied lands to avoid antagonizing Arabs.

[David]

Ironically enough, your argument makes it more acceptable to punish fundies, not less. By claiming that their hatred is individual rather than being "inherited" from a social movement, you eliminate the argument that it is wrong to judge them as a group rather than individuals (since they all individually choose to hate and be uselessly stupid, thus making them all individually guilty and validating the original person's argument). I can only assume that this was an unintended consequence of your argument.

We seem to have a problem in the communication here. I apologize if I'm not making myself clear, and if you have misunderstood me because of that.

My point is simply that people should be judged individually. People create movements and social orders, and people choose whether or not accept or reject those movements. If I or anyone chooses to accept a way of life that will harm others, then they should be held accountable for it. I don't know about the rest of the world, but that is what I think is so great about America, Canada, Britian, and a host of other nations, is that the citizens of those countries are judged for what they do in life and their person decisions, not the decisions of their parents or anyone else. So no, that was not an unintended consequence of my arguement, that is the whole point of it. It is also that you cannot punish people for what they have not done. So what if 100 million Christians in the US are against gays and abortion? How many of that 100 million actually set out to kill abortion doctors and gays? If they all did, there would be no gays left alive in this country, and Austin would be a smoking crater. Yet data_link still suggests that all of them die because of their beliefs.

I not tring to be arguementative, I'm tring to show you my point of view.


All of this seems to come down to what part of the population we are talking about, what crime they have commited, and what the punishment is for that crime.



So what part of the population? All fundies from data_link's orginal statement.

So then what are fundies? From data_link's original statement I took it to mean pretty much anyone with some type of religion, because no religion can be backed up with proof. I still think he meant this despite his attempts to change what he said. First it was a substantial portion of the population, then only a small violent subset. Then he said that their were lots of them, but if that's true, why do they have such a great affect on the rest of us, and why did he say at first that it would reduce the population signifigantly? A classic way of winning a debate, changing your original premises.

So what is this horrible crime that they should all be sentenced to death for? data_link did not define this group as people that were attempting to physically harm him or other people, only that they were people that sought to repress the world intellectually. When I possed the question of "What would you do if you children were taught creation in schools?" you replied that you would teach that it was wrong. What data_link propossed is effectively the same as saying that you would take a gun up to school and kill the teacher that dared to intellectually repress your children.

As to the punishment? Like I said before, nothing less than death. We are not talking about making bad people magically disappear, but actually killing them with intent.


I cannot and will not condone violence against anyone who has not shown themselves to be a threat to me or others. I more over contend that it is not right to hurt people because they disagree with you. If someone says 1+1=3 and tries to teach it to everyone on the face of the earth, I say more power to them, because I can easily prove them wrong.

It's easily to say, " Well what it it were to magically happen..." .

Someone might make the case, " Would the world be a better place if Africa just disappeared from the face of the earth? After all, it's nothing but a hotbed of violence, disease, and death. Then we could quit spending billions helping them and spend on other things."

But the only quick, practical way you could do this would be to kill all of them with a handy dandy plaque that only targets those people.


So would the world be a better place if every fundie died? I don't know because I can't see the future, but I contend that neither I, nor data_link, nor anyone else has the right to decided if a person gets to live or die due to their beliefs.


The only time we have the right to act agianst another for their beliefs is when they decide to harm another. At that point, they have made the personal choice to harm another, and they should be punished individually for that crime.


One might go back to the example of the Aryans. They are, in a way, fundimentalists. Would the world be a better place if they all ceased to exist? Probably. And let us also give a "what if" scenario. What if the Aryans came to power? Would the world suffer? Undoubtibly.

So after all these what ifs and propsitons, I'm sure you have decided that the world would be a better place if they all died. So Mike, let us say you are magically transported to some great wide open space. A field let's say. In your hand is a pistol and in front of you a neat little line of fundies and Aryans. You know they hate you, after all, your just a lesser being to them. Worse even, you turned a white woman into a race traitor, and bred muds with her. You know the world would thank you if they all died, so do you pull the trigger? You know they might hurt you if they ever get power. So why not kill them?


As data_link said, the world needs people that will make thos hard decisions. So will you be that person?


Or maybe data_link?


Or maybe me?


Or maybe anyone who decides they are doing it for the good of everyone?


I'm sorry, but I've heard these arguments before. They were made by people who decided they would be the people to make those hard decisions, and I personally don't like the result.


Once upon a time, actually in 1924, a certain someone decided he had found the root of all the worlds problems. He decided he would be the one to make those tough decisions. And once he did, the world would be a utopia. He was intelligent, rational, and had no problem making those bloody decisions.

Can anyone guess who that certain someone is? He would most heartily agree that fundamentalists are the cause of many problems. Of corse, he did it with a bullet to the back of the head instead of a virus.


Das Vidania Comrades.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why not just check the Google listings of news reports and articles pertaining to this subject?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=I ... a+AND+Bias

http://news.google.com/news?q=Israeli+A ... a=N&tab=wn

Here's one example:

http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/alert/abcbaby.html

That source in particular is biased, but I confess that I'm being lazy, I recall the particular incident and the retraction, and the ABC archives would not be impossible to dig through. If you want me to I will. The mainstream media was wrong there and can be wrong elsewhere.

You act as though Israel's sins are so small, and Palestine's so large, that for me to disagree is somehow a quasi-Biblical argument. That is sidestepping your responsibility to show that this is, in fact, the case rather than casting rhetoric under the assumption that you don't need to. BTW, do you believe that enslaving millions for decades is no big deal?

I don't think that the Palestinians are enslaved. What happens is that they live their lives normally, some suffer, some make money off the situation - Until the violence heats up again. And then there's a lock down, combat, bloodshed. Eventually it's dissapated, at least before, and they go back to living on the fringe between Israel and the Arab World, and making clever ways to profit off of it.

A lot of black market stuff, some legitimate businessmen - Notice that before the Intifada started the Palestinians were actually doing decently, at least by the standards of the muslim world there were worse places, some by far. Actually, there still are - I'm talking economically, even, not in terms of repressive government, but there's that, too. If anything, the government is probably less repressive now, as it is contested and thus ineffectual - One can argue that anarchy is the ultimate form of freedom. The downside, of course, is that the real facts of anarchy are unpleasant.

But philosophically, the Palestinians don't have it that bad, and not even in a qualitative sense did they before the intifada started.

As for the comparative evils of Israel and Palestine - I have thought it obvious the entire time that the actions of Israel which have been morally questionable (Short of challenging the founding of the State its self) have been slight in comparison to those of the PLO, when one considers both its operations against Israel and in Lebanon.

But then, we likely rely on entirely different sources, and judge those sources from different perspectives. When you want to prove that Israel has committed "sins" to a lesser extent than Palestine, to be honest, I thought the demand was completely ridiculous - That any rational person would know that through a simple examination of the available evidence. I suppose that illustrates a critical divide, and I'm going to have to think about that more.

You did exactly as I predicted; you tried to justify the massacre.

No, I said it never happened. There's a difference.

It's just a "few hundred murders". And the Israelis didn't commit it; they just send in their henchmen, trapped the victims in the compound, and listened to them dying all night. I knew you would try to justify it.

Again, I'm not trying to justify it. There's no reason to try and justify something that never happened. Sabra and Shatila are suburbs of Beirut, not refugee camps, though Palestinians had been living there since '49. The area was heavily built-up, complete with multistory buildings and etc, a real trap for street-to-street, door-to-door urban warfare, and the PLO had further fortified it with underground tunnels, ammunition and weapons dumps, etc.

After Arafat left with most of his followers, some of the holdouts who remained behind illegally were concentrated in Sabra and Shatila. The Israelis launched an operation to get rid of them, and since their Phalangist "allies" hadn't been pulling their weight for the entire conflict, they pushed them into carrying out the principle part of the operation.

They did, but it was also immediately after the death of the popular Phalangist president, and when they went in they did it indescriminately; not like that's hard to do anyway in heavy urban combat. How many German civilians died in the Battle of Berlin in '45, for example? Even so, the casualty figure was in the hundreds, and at one point Israeli troops even fired on the Phalangists to get them to halt their actions.

The Israeli Labour Party, however, used it in an internal political dispute, which exagerrated it, and then the world media got ahold of it and exagerrated it even further; the left has taken hold of it and turned it into the Popular Evil of Israel.

Split into chunks, subject to all of the restrictions I mentioned before. You regard that as sovereignty? It would merely place part of Jordan under effective Israeli rule.

And Jordan has a military, which the Palestinians will never be able to have. So the Jordanians have a certain amount of bargaining power with the State of Israel.

You know, this situation is much more obvious when you look at the Allon plan on a map. Bite-size pieces of land rather than a contiguous piece, with full Israeli control of movement between those pieces.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/allonplan.html (For the record of those who haven't seen it.)

Well, actually, Jordan would have control of Israeli movement between the north and south sectors, short of a long detour. And, yes, two other sectors would be detached. But again, Jordan has an army to counter any abrupt Israeli shutdown. Israel desires security, but in this case its security is gained by the annexations - And now further operations must take into account the sensitivities of the Jordanian State.

Going to war with Jordan in a situation like this might easily bring in the other Arab States, so there is no guarantee of easy Israeli victory. And even an outmatched military force, like Jordan's, is still one that can exert pressure, by the demand of the resources to defeat it, and the problem of what to do after it has been crushed - For the Palestinians would then be there, unresolvable, once more.

If Israel can come to such an agreement with a state that can support the interests of the Palestinian people, they will gain their security, and the Palestinian people will gain their's. And at least at that point in time Israel was willing to do this - Take the land they wanted for their security, and give up the rest to another State, even though it would mean the counterbalance of involving another genuine Nation State in the process.

Since they have never been offered a viable plan (the Allon plan does not give them anything remotely resembling a livable arrangement), who are you to categorically state that they would refuse it? Yes, they would like to see Israel gone. And Israel would like to see them gone. The point is that if a workable arrangement were laid on the table and they still refused, you might have a point. But I've seen the Allon plan on a map, and it is not a workable plan. The Israelis have never presented a workable plan that doesn't involve the effective perpetuation of the status quo in which Palestinians live under effective Israeli overlordship.

I think the Allon Plan is a basically workable concept - Again, it's the counterbalance of a Nation State's army, which otherwise wouldn't exist.


Hrmm..

A purely hypothetical:

If there was a territorial corridor from the lower West Bank (Hebron/Bethlehem) to the upper West Bank, the two sections to be under Jordanian control - So that it was a single section, linked by a corridor of territory of decent scope, and of course the Jericho corridor linking the Palestinian West Bank to Jordan - And then, the entirety of Gaza, instead of just the northern portion, being ceded to Egypt.. Do you think this would be equitable?

It would satisfy the requirement of the Palestinians being able to move within their respective national territories freely, and without Israeli blockage or intervention. The Israelis would have their defendable borders - For all the talk of Gaza being an invasion route, it can easily be covered by modern artillery from other points within Israel - And the Nation States of Jordan and Egypt would be responsible for defending Palestinian rights, with Jordan in particular having a population almost entirely Palestinian.

[Darth Wong]

My point is simply that people should be judged individually. People create movements and social orders, and people choose whether or not accept or reject those movements.

Then you are saying that every fundie chooses to be a fundie, so they can be held individually responsible for the values of the movement. Isn't that what I was saying before?

So then what are fundies? From data_link's original statement I took it to mean pretty much anyone with some type of religion, because no religion can be backed up with proof.

Fundamentalism is a dictionary-defined movement. They are people who believe in Biblical literalism (or Koranic literalism, etc). They are extremists by definition; there is no such thing as a moderate fundie.

So what is this horrible crime that they should all be sentenced to death for? data_link did not define this group as people that were attempting to physically harm him or other people, only that they were people that sought to repress the world intellectually. When I possed the question of "What would you do if you children were taught creation in schools?" you replied that you would teach that it was wrong. What data_link propossed is effectively the same as saying that you would take a gun up to school and kill the teacher that dared to intellectually repress your children.

Of course. I have never agreed with the notion of killing them. You can't kill someone for being an asshole or an idiot; you have to wait for them to do something wrong. I think data_link is just playing devil's advocate.

So would the world be a better place if every fundie died? I don't know because I can't see the future, but I contend that neither I, nor data_link, nor anyone else has the right to decided if a person gets to live or die due to their beliefs.

You are conjoining two separate issues. Would the world be a better place after every fundie mysteriously died from some bizarre fundie affliction? Perhaps. Fundies teach irrationality, ignorance, and bigotry (and then they accuse others of being "bigots" if they criticize their own bigotry, as if it would be wrong to criticize Nazis too). There are few (if any) societal forces more historically destructive than irrationality, ignorance, and bigotry. Many of the world's present wars would disappear overnight. However, that presumes their deaths are unavoidable mysterious phenomena beyond our control, not acts which we undertake deliberately; that would be mass-murder.

So after all these what ifs and propsitons, I'm sure you have decided that the world would be a better place if they all died. So Mike, let us say you are magically transported to some great wide open space. A field let's say. In your hand is a pistol and in front of you a neat little line of fundies and Aryans. You know they hate you, after all, your just a lesser being to them. Worse even, you turned a white woman into a race traitor, and bred muds with her. You know the world would thank you if they all died, so do you pull the trigger? You know they might hurt you if they ever get power. So why not kill them?

Because that would cause suffering and death with the flimsy justification of crystall-ball reading.

Once upon a time, actually in 1924, a certain someone decided he had found the root of all the worlds problems. He decided he would be the one to make those tough decisions. And once he did, the world would be a utopia. He was intelligent, rational, and had no problem making those bloody decisions.

Can anyone guess who that certain someone is? He would most heartily agree that fundamentalists are the cause of many problems. Of corse, he did it with a bullet to the back of the head instead of a virus.

Irrelevant grandstanding. Your attempt to employ guilt by association tactics is transparent and insulting, not to mention a gross distortion of my position. At no point have I ever advocated their murder, so stop this goddamned strawman distortion of my argument. You may say you're not trying to be argumentative, but when you try to distort someone's argument to put words in his mouth and then compare him to Stalin or Hitler, you're being pretty fucking argumentative whether you admit it or not.

[David]

From the Allon plan it looks like the Israelis would have gotten the short end of the stick. They get to keep half of the country, and that half is split into three peices. Jordan gets half of the country, with most of that half attached to Jordan.


I'm sure the Israeli generals had nightmares for weeks.

[Darth Wong]

From the Allon plan it looks like the Israelis would have gotten the short end of the stick. They get to keep half of the country, and that half is split into three peices. Jordan gets half of the country, with most of that half attached to Jordan.

I'm sure the Israeli generals had nightmares for weeks.

I don't think so. Allon was a military leader. He cooked up the plan as a way of ensuring Israeli military security! You need to look more closely at the facts; you seem to have misread the scenario. Under the Allon Plan, the Palestinians get 97% of the occupied territories, ie- their land area shrinks by 3%, and it's split into pieces. The Israelis cede nothing, and maintain operational control over the borders, water, and airspace of the resulting faux-nation.