Darth Wong wrote:
Wait a minute, are we assuming that any extremist leader who has been KIA must have been willingly exposing himself to enemy fire in the hopes that Allah would protect him? Are we therefore assuming that first-world militaries are so woefully incompetent that they should never be able to nail anyone unless that person wants to be nailed?
I can't precisely say. There's been some radical Islamist leaders killed on the front lines in Palestine, in Iraqi, in Yemen, and many in Afghanistan. Bin Laden himself is not some coward hiding from America. He did see some actual combat against the Soviets in the 1980s.
The point, however, is that highly intelligent and capable of individuals who are raised in religious society are just as capable of insane, suicidal acts as those who are ignorant and less educated. A good example are the generally highly erudite Buddhist monks, who in previous Japanese history
mummified themselves. By force of will, while still alive, they abstained from food and instead ingested preservative chemicals and so on until they died, having protected their bodies from rot. You can go to Japan and see them in Buddhist shrines.
In short, in religion, things like that Hindu priest killing himself and saying he will be revived is
not uncommon, Mike. Really, I think the problem is that we just don't take seriously what the likes of Osama bin Laden say. He's a highly intelligent individual who has achieved the incredible feat of taking on the United States and fighting us more or less to a bloody draw over six years. Why do we assume he is incapable of, or disinterested in, dying for his cause? He is not fundamentally irrational; he is simply irrational because his own rationality is based entirely around the worldview of the Islamic religion, and therefore he is only irrational because his worldview is objectively false. Why is it assumed that he's lying about his own desire for martyrdom? Since his own worldview is
internally consistent, couldn't he genuinely desire that and at the same time recognize that he could better serve Allah by staying alive and commanding others?
Why do we refuse to take the words of these people at face value? It seems to me this is exactly the same thing that goes on when people make excuses about the death threats that conservative Christians make: "You're going to burn in agony in Hell forever!" Why isn't that a death threat under the law? Because they didn't really mean it? Because there's no way to prove it will actually happen? But then again you can be arrested for threatening someone even when there's no proof you actually were preparing to carry out the threat.
It seems to me that, particularly among rational individuals, there is a hesitation to accept the full and horrible consequences of religion. It can, has, and likely will again produce societies which are fundamentally irrational from top to bottom, where nominally intelligent and rational people will come up with utterly insane things, and do utterly insane things, because their entire worldview has been grounded on a complete fantasy.
Hell, I might be wrong, but certainly it should seem obvious that nuclear weapons in the possession of such people would be the most terrifying thing possible.
"
. Or is there something unpleasant to you in these discussions of casualties exceeding WW2 by far for some reason, or the fact that it might be argued to be a lesser evil.
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It's also gets further irony given how she manages to state it in a pretty matter of fact manner, totally avoiding the "WE'RE SO FUCKED!" vibe that other posters sometimes give off. So she is something of a Ms. Sunshine.