What is x?

[Tobias]

Next logical step ~ Anyone who works in the horror movie industry or makes scary Halloween decorations is also a "terrorist".


When the USA government declares that they will not negotiate with terrorist I don't think they meant that to include film makers.


I know the independent militia groups in the Middle East do not like to be called terrorists. They use the same logic we see here to prove that the USA and her allies are waging war against their people, creating terror and other negative situations, and they think that their methods are justified as acts of war.

Standing in opposition to a superpower, they stand no chance if they fight out in the open. Just like the American colonies in the Revolutionary war. They cannot meet us in open battle. If they were aligned with a specific nation, we would destroy that nation. So they hide in caves and in the desert, and strike wherever they can.

Have we only learned to call them terrorists because we've swallowed American propaganda? Or are there legitimate rules of combat that the entire rest of the civilized world has determined are worth upholding? I mean, like is it ok to shoot your gun at enemy forces from behind a tree, or should all soldiers wear red and stand facing each other in an open field?

Are we really naive enough to not know that America retains it's wealth by oppressing the rest of the world?

Like the protester's sign said above: "bombing people creates terrorists."


Consider it like this: A rich and powerful lawyer finds a loophole in the law and decides to pick on a poor uneducated farmer. He takes him to court, and easily wins the tittle to the farm and all the poor man's possessions.

Farmer takes his shotgun and goes after the lawyer...

Who's the criminal? The farmer. Why? Because we should all be perfectly content when really rich people steal our stuff using legal means, right?

 

[Tobias]

Speaking of terror, what's the deal with nuclear weapons?

I remember growing up in fear of Russia, and all the discussions about a nuclear holocaust. It never made sense to me that our only line of defense against nuclear war was/is "mutual assured destruction". That doesn't make anyone really feel all that safe when we know the bombs are in the hands of military men who don't always have the same value for life that the rest of us do!

But now I wonder how people in non-nuclear weaponized countries feel about all the American bombs aimed at them. At least we have the ability to fight back, and can take some comfort in knowing that Russia would become just as much of a wasteland as our country if it ever came down to that. What about those who have no recourse, and could any day be blotted off the map if someone in Washington decided it was time to go for it?

Does growing up as a person with American guns pointed at you head (because we don't trust you), cause some people to turn into terrorists?

 

[Crandaddy]

Next logical step ~ Anyone who works in the horror movie industry or makes scary Halloween decorations is also a "terrorist".


When the USA government declares that they will not negotiate with terrorist I don't think they meant that to include film makers.

My definition of terrorism requires that those who engage in that activity intend to psychologically manipulate their victims. This implies that a terrorist must intend to inflict fear upon his or her victims without their consent.

Filmmakers in the horror genre do not force people to watch their films. People choose to watch horror films because on some level and/or to some degree, the experience of fear can be pleasurable. Likewise for those in the Halloween decoration industry.

And yes, before you mention it, I am well aware that such petty activities as practical jokes technically qualify as "terrorism" on my definition. And no, I don't think practical jokes should be outlawed categorically.

Terrorist acts specifically, like immoral acts generally, fall along a spectrum of severity. Mild acts of terrorism, such as (almost) harmless practical jokes, may be justly ignored by law (the idea that government should be in the business of legislating all immoral conduct regardless of severity strikes me as patently absurd), but more severe acts, such as pushing lies about anthrax in order to scare up a war with Iraq, are quite reasonably deserving of legislative proscription.

So, while I stand by my definition of "terrorism," I think Jane's is the more interesting and practical definition because its focus is narrowed to those specific types of terrorist activity that need most concern us.

 

[SanFrank]

man + x = terrorist
terrorist - x = man

X is making an ignorant decision in response to faith. I do not believe X can be removed from the equation giving man again. The terrorist is lost to ignorance. So the solution is to prevent X from joining with man.

A thorough education into all religions including the origins/history of the 3 major religions may prepare a child into making a proper religious decision and should certainly help in the choice of religion when moral/ethical standards are brought into play. Education should be based on the historically proven hebrew scriptures demonstrating the foundation for all 3 religions. This sort of education is not possible in muslim countries but it is still possible in free nations. Its imperative to educate people at a young age so that kids can make an intelligent religious decision. Bring religion back into public schooling.

 

[Tobias]

Bring religion back into public schooling.

My son is currently studying Islam in 7th grade in the California public school system. Your wish may already be granted!

 

[Crandaddy]

X is making an ignorant decision in response to faith. I do not believe X can be removed from the equation giving man again. The terrorist is lost to ignorance. So the solution is to prevent X from joining with man.

A thorough education into all religions including the origins/history of the 3 major religions may prepare a child into making a proper religious decision and should certainly help in the choice of religion when moral/ethical standards are brought into play. Education should be based on the historically proven hebrew scriptures demonstrating the foundation for all 3 religions. This sort of education is not possible in muslim countries but it is still possible in free nations. Its imperative to educate people at a young age so that kids can make an intelligent religious decision. Bring religion back into public schooling.

So, you're saying that religious ignorance makes a terrorist, and that such ignorance is irreparable?

Well, first of all, I can see no reason to think that ignorance of any sort is the key factor that makes a terrorist, let alone religious ignorance. I can see no reason at all why someone who has the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Quran, all three memorized backwards and forwards can't also be a mass-murdering, terrorist madman. The problem with such an individual isn't ignorance; it's evil. We don't learn how to be moral by reading books--not even sacred books. Don't forget that the Pharisees of Jesus' day knew their Torah, and Jesus didn't exactly have very kind words to say of them, did he?

And second, even if you're right that religious ignorance is the key factor that leads to terrorism, why should terrorist-stage ignorance be irreparable? Why can't terrorist tendencies be cured simply with education? I don't see any reason why there should be a point of no return. Your icon says that you're a Christian. Do you think that God can't change a terrorist?

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

A thorough education into all religions including the origins/history of the 3 major religions may prepare a child into making a proper religious decision and should certainly help in the choice of religion when moral/ethical standards are brought into play.

There are more than three major religions (and Judaism is not one of the top three if we judge by number of adherents, anyway).
However, I like the idea of a religious education class that actually focuses on acquainting children with the history of human spirituality in a more generalized fashion, instead of indoctrinating them with one specific ideology and just giving all other world views a casual glance through the distorted lens of that specific POV. Ideally, this class would not even be limited to religions, but also address ethics and morality in a more universal fashion, including a history of different philosophical schools and secular world views.

Education should be based on the historically proven hebrew scriptures demonstrating the foundation for all 3 religions.

"Historically proven Hebrew scriptures"?
What, specifically, are you talking about here?

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

Next logical step ~ Anyone who works in the horror movie industry or makes scary Halloween decorations is also a "terrorist".

No, that is not the next logical step. Horror movies and Halloween decorations seek to entertain, not to terrorize. The scares they produce are offset by clear signals that point to the fictional nature of the experience.

The "logic" you use here is akin to reasoning that since dogs have four legs and cats have four legs, cats must be dogs.

Have we only learned to call them terrorists because we've swallowed American propaganda?

Not every guerilla is a terrorists, nor is every terrorist a guerilla fighter.
As has been stated before, terrorist acts are characterized by a desire to cause terror - genuine terror, not entertaining scares - and thus demoralize the enemy.
It is true that many states have found it opportune to refer to any resistance fighters as "terrorists", but in this particular case, it's not just American propaganda. (Except when the Bush administration and Fox News set out to convince the populace that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 attacks - and succeeded, because the masses actually are *that* gullible.)
Flying an airplane into a skyscraper is pretty obviously a terrorist act by any definition of the word: it's not a military target, its destruction does not render any tactical or strategic advantage. Instead, the purpose is to cause fear.

If we are discussing US propaganda, however, what needs to be pointed out that the US media never really got to the point where they explored the causes behind the attacks. Instead, slogans like "these people just hate our freedom" were circulated, and the images of the collapsing twin towers were used to great effect to provoke the kind of emotional response that made things like the Patriot Act or Guantanamo Bay possible.

(And no, I am *not* blaming the victims. To a large degree, the 9/11 attacks *were* based on the unreasonable hatred of religious extremists. But it is foolish to dismiss the role that economics and foreign policy played in bringing many people to the point where they became receptive to such extremism. Colonialism, cold war politics, pet dictators, and a directive that saw "unrestricted access to natural resources" as a sufficient reason for the use of military force: all of these provided a perfect breeding ground for the kind of problems we are facing today.

Chances are that Iran, for example, would not be the radical Islamist theocracy we know today if the USA and Britain had not decided that the Iranian people had no right to their nation's natural resources, and staged a coup that deposed of the elected, civilian government in 1953, replacing them with their pet dictator who handed the oil over to international corporations once more. It also did not help that the Shah, like another pet dictator of the USA, resorted to torture and deadly force to sustain his regime in the following decades, right until he was deposed in the revolution of 1979.)

 

[Ana the Ist]

So, you're saying that religious ignorance makes a terrorist, and that such ignorance is irreparable?

Well, first of all, I can see no reason to think that ignorance of any sort is the key factor that makes a terrorist, let alone religious ignorance. I can see no reason at all why someone who has the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Quran, all three memorized backwards and forwards can't also be a mass-murdering, terrorist madman. The problem with such an individual isn't ignorance; it's evil. We don't learn how to be moral by reading books--not even sacred books. Don't forget that the Pharisees of Jesus' day knew their Torah, and Jesus didn't exactly have very kind words to say of them, did he?

And second, even if you're right that religious ignorance is the key factor that leads to terrorism, why should terrorist-stage ignorance be irreparable? Why can't terrorist tendencies be cured simply with education? I don't see any reason why there should be a point of no return. Your icon says that you're a Christian. Do you think that God can't change a terrorist?

Evil? One man's evil is another man's righteousness. It could just as easily be said that the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorist's trying (successfully) to stir up a war between the colonies and England. I think most of the posters here have missed the mark almost entirely. Religion need not be a factor at all in terrorism. If I remember correctly, the Oklahoma City bombing was a tragedy motivated entirely by political factors...not religious.

It's outright silly to suggest that any one factor would be responsible for making a man into a terrorist. Terrorism is in itself, a method of war commonly used by groups that are greatly outnumbered...or technologically far behind their enemies. The goal of terrorism is to demoralize a population through violent acts that have a measure of surprise and/or randomness. Through such violence, the population under attack which had previously felt "safe" then feels as if the only way to become "safe" again is to capitulate and cede to the terms or wishes of the terrorists.

The acts of violence are never really intended to achieve the goals of the terrorists themselves. Instead, it is the fear created by the violence which is supposed to help achieve the goals of the terrorists.

You can pull whatever "x" you like from that.

 

[oi_antz]

...
You can pull whatever "x" you like from that.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Ana, I like this bit:

The goal of terrorism is to demoralize a population through violent acts that have a measure of surprise and/or randomness. Through such violence, the population under attack which had previously felt "safe" then feels as if the only way to become "safe" again is to capitulate and cede to the terms or wishes of the terrorists.

 

[Crandaddy]

Evil? One man's evil is another man's righteousness.

To some extent, yes. But all of us who are sane understand evil at some basic level.

It could just as easily be said that the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorist's trying (successfully) to stir up a war between the colonies and England.

I don't quite see how the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism, though I do think one might reasonably argue that it was immoral. I don't hold the Boston Tea Partiers or any of the other American revolutionaries up as saints.

Religion need not be a factor at all in terrorism.

I agree. In fact, I suspect the most dangerous forms of terrorism we face today are not religiously motivated.

 

[Ana the Ist]

To some extent, yes. But all of us who are sane understand evil at some basic level.

I disagree.

 

[SanFrank]

"Historically proven Hebrew scriptures"?
What, specifically, are you talking about here?

The documentary evidence for the reliability of the Bible has been an area of research which has been increasing rapidly over the last few decades. But this hasn't always been so. The assumption by many former archaeologists was that the Old Testament was written not in the tenth to fourteenth centuries B.C. by the authors described within its text, but by later Jewish historians during the much later second to sixth century B.C., and that the stories were then redacted back onto the great prophets such as Moses and David, etc... Yet, with the enormous quantity of data which has been uncovered and is continuing to be uncovered, as well as the new forensic research methods being employed to study them, what we are now finding is that many of these preconceived notions of authorship are simply no longer valid. For instance
(1) The skeptics contended that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, because there was no evidence of any writing that early. Then the Black Stele was found with the detailed laws of Hammurabi which were written 300 years before Moses, and in the same region.

(2) There was much doubt as to the reliability of the Old Testament documents, since the oldest manuscript in our possession was the Massoretic Text, written in 916 A.D. How, the skeptics asked, can we depend on a set of writings whose earliest manuscripts are so recent? Then came the amazing discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls written around 125 B.C. These scrolls show us that outside of minute copying errors it is identical to the Massoretic Text and yet it predates it by over 1,000 years! We have further corroboration in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, translated around 150-200 B.C.
Yet to please the skeptics, the best documentary evidence for the reliability of the Biblical text must come from documents external to the Biblical text themselves. There has always been doubt concerning the stories of Abraham and the Patriarchs found in the books attributed to Moses, the Pentateuch. The skeptics maintained that there is no method of ascertaining their reliability since we have no corroboration from external secular accounts. This has all changed; for instance:
(3) Discoveries from excavations at Nuzu, Mari and Assyrian, Hittite, Sumerian and Eshunna Codes point out that Hebrew poetry, Mosaic legislation as well as the Hebrew social customs all fit the period and region of the patriarchs.
(4) According to the historians there were no Hittites at the time of Abraham, thus the historicity of the Biblical accounts describing them was questionable. Now we know from inscriptions of that period that there were 1,200 years of Hittite civilization, much of it corresponding with the Patriarchal period.
(5) Historians also told us that no such people as the Horites existed. It is these people whom we find mentioned in the genealogy of Esau in Genesis 36:20. Yet now they have been discovered as a group of warriors also living in Mesopotamia during the Patriarchal period.
(6) The account of Daniel, according to the sceptical historians, must have been written in the second century and not the sixth century B.C. because of all the precise historical detail found in its content. Yet now the sixth century's East India Inscription corresponds with the Daniel 4:30 account of Nebuchadnezzar's building, proving that the author of Daniel must have been an eye-witness from that period. Either way it is amazing.
The strongest case for extra-Biblical corroboration of the Patriarchal period is found in four sets of tablets which have been and are continuing to be uncovered from that area of the world. They demonstrate that the Biblical account is indeed historically reliable. Let's briefly look at all four sets of tablets.
(7) *Armana tablets: (from Egypt) mention the Habiru or Apiru in Hebrew, which was first applied to Abraham in Genesis 14:13.
(8) *Ebla tablets: 17,000 tablets from Tell Mardikh (Northern Syria), dating from 2300 B.C., shows us that a thousand years before Moses, laws, customs and events were recorded in writing in that part of the world, and that the judicial proceedings and case laws were very similar to the Deuteronomy law code (i.e. Deuteronomy 22:22-30 codes on punishment for sex offenses). One tablet mentions and lists the five cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar in the exact sequence which we find in Genesis 14:8! Until these tablets were uncovered the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah had always been in doubt by historians.
(9) *Mari tablets: (from the Euphrates) mentions king Arriyuk, or Arioch of Genesis 14, and lists the towns of Nahor and Harran (from Genesis 24:10), as well as the names Benjamin and Habiru.
(10) *Nuzi tablets: (from Iraq) speaks about a number of customs which we find in the Pentateuch, such as:
a) a barren wife giving a handmaiden to her husband (i.e. Hagar)
b) a bride chosen for the son by the father (i.e. Rebekah)
c) a dowry paid to the father-in-law (i.e. Jacob)
d) work done to pay a dowry (i.e. Jacob)
e) the unchanging oral will of a father (i.e. Isaac)
f) a father giving his daughter a slave-girl (i.e. Leah, Rachel)
g) the sentence of death for stealing a cult gods (i.e. Jacob).
Because of these extra-Biblical discoveries many of the historians are now changing their position. Thus Joseph Free states: "New discoveries now show us that a host of supposed [Biblical] errors and contradictions are not errors at all: such as, that Sargon existed and lived in a palatial dwelling 12 miles north of Ninevah, that the Hittites were a significant people, that the concept of a sevenfold lamp existed in the early Iron Age, that a significant city given in the record of David's empire lies far to the north, and that Belshazzar existed and ruled over Babylon."

 

[SanFrank]

I don't see any reason why there should be a point of no return. Your icon says that you're a Christian. Do you think that God can't change a terrorist?

An islamic extremist will not change his beliefs by having discussions with us nor by the wisdom of other men. It would require a vision from the Lord Himself as occurred with Paul. I am aware of egyptian testimonies of muslims who had visions and turned to christianity. But you must admit, this is rare.

And if I were you, don't try to change an extremist yourself. If authorities incarcerate the extremists, then there is a fighting chance to minister to them. Everyone lends an open ear when incarcerated. It works wonders.

 

[Jane_the_Bane]

The documentary evidence for the reliability of the Bible has been an area of research which has been increasing rapidly over the last few decades.

Actual academic sources disagree. In fact, most scholars fall between the Biblical minimalist and - maximalist schools (the latter being mostly composed of fundamentalists and evangelicals: people with a heavy confirmation bias).
Accordingly, the most widely held stance is that the Bible contains quite a few credible references to historical sites, people and places - and lots of myth on the side.

The assumption by many former archaeologists was that the Old Testament was written not in the tenth to fourteenth centuries B.C. by the authors described within its text, but by later Jewish historians during the much later second to sixth century B.C., and that the stories were then redacted back onto the great prophets such as Moses and David, etc...

And this has not changed at all:

"...an archaeological analysis of the patriarchal, conquest, judges, and United Monarchy narratives [shows] that while there is no compelling archaeological evidence for any of them, there is clear archaeological evidence that places the stories themselves in a late 7th-century BCE context." (Finkelstein & Silberman 2001)

(1) The skeptics contended that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses, because there was no evidence of any writing that early. Then the Black Stele was found with the detailed laws of Hammurabi which were written 300 years before Moses, and in the same region.

And this does nothing to support Mosaic authorship, let alone the divine origin of Mosaic law. If anything, it challenges the notion of YHVH's role, as the principles expressed therein had been around for centuries in Babylon.

(2) There was much doubt as to the reliability of the Old Testament documents, since the oldest manuscript in our possession was the Massoretic [sic] Text, written in 916 A.D. How, the skeptics asked, can we depend on a set of writings whose earliest manuscripts are so recent? Then came the amazing discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls written around 125 B.C. These scrolls show us that outside of minute copying errors it is identical to the Massoretic Text and yet it predates it by over 1,000 years! We have further corroboration in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, translated around 150-200 B.C.

Scholars never had much of a problem with the fact that our earliest manuscripts came from a later date: they could still trace the texts back to the 6th and 7th century BCE by means of textual exegesis and biblical archaeology.
The Dead Sea Scrolls did nothing to change that. They are quite valuable, but they do not constitute a major paradigm shift.

It's really not that spectacular to have a text correctly name peoples and places that existed in the region they were written in. It's true that the historicity of the Hittites was doubted in the past (as was the historicity of Troy), but their discovery did not prove the supernatural claims of the Bible any more than they did the Iliad's.

And here are some of the details that clearly place the OT-scriptures in a 9th-7th century BCE context:

- Aramaeans are frequently mentioned, but no ancient text mentions them until around 1100BCE, and they only begin to dominate Israel's northern borders after the 9th century BCE.

- The text describes the early origin of the neighbouring kingdom of Edom, but Assyrian records show that Edom only came into existence after the conquest of the region by Assyria; before then it was without functioning kings, wasn't a distinct state, and archaeological evidence shows that the territory was only sparsely populated.

- The Joseph story refers to camel-based traders carrying gum, balm, and myrrh, which is unlikely prior to the first millennium, such activity only becoming common in the 8th-7th centuries BCE, when Assyrian hegemony enabled this Arabian trade to flourish into a major industry.

- The land of Goshen has a name that comes from an Arabic group who dominated the Nile Delta only in the 6th and 5th centuries.

- The Egyptian Pharaoh is portrayed as fearing invasion from the east, even though Egypt's territory stretched to the northern parts of Canaan, with its main threat consequently being from the north, until the 7th century


In fact, since the 1970s, efforts to reconstruct a patriarchal age for Israel's past have come to an end, as there is nothing specific in the Genesis stories that can be definitively linked to known history in or around Canaan in the early second millennium BCE. There is no solid evidence for any date during that period, as none of the kings mentioned are known, neither the anonymous Pharaoh who enlists Joseph into his services. Some scholars argue that historical inaccuracies exist, such as: the reference to Abimelech "King of the Philistines", when the Phlistines had not settled in Palestine until the later end of the millennium. Abraham coming from "Ur of the Chaldeans", when the Babylonians were not known as Chaldeans until a much later time. Laban identified as an Aramean, when Arameans did not become a known political entity before the 12th century BCE.

 

[Crandaddy]

An islamic extremist will not change his beliefs by having discussions with us nor by the wisdom of other men.

But, to be fair, might not this apply to any deeply-ingrained ideology? It seems to me that people can irrationally cling to beliefs and ideologies of many different kinds--both religious and nonreligious.

I know the talking heads in the media like to tell us all about how evil and scary those "Islamic extremists" are, but I, for one, don't buy it. I know that many people in Muslim countries hate us, but look at what we're doing to them. Not only do we ourselves support dictators, impose sanctions, and wage wars against them that kill their civilians by the thousands, but we give billions of dollars of military aid to a certain country that does things like this:

[youtube]LO7Am6sapxY[/youtube]

It is not at all implausible that the people in those countries hate us, not because of religious extremism, but because we make their lives a living hell.
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