RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2015 2:41 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

On 13 January 2015 at 11:14, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 1/12/2015 1:57 PM, LizR wrote:

On 12 January 2015 at 14:48, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:

On 1/11/2015 4:22 PM, LizR wrote:

Also on the subject

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27987-these-terrorist-attacks-are-not-about-religion


They say it's about their religion when they do it.  They cite religious 
reasons for doing it.  Of course almost any action has multiple causes; but why 
should we believe the apologists analysis of a co-religionist?  Maybe it's not 
his sect of the religion, but he doesn't get to define other people's religion 
for them.

I agree that they should be pursued and prosecuted as criminals. One can't 
prosecute a religion.  But one can oppose the ideas of a religion and criticize 
its tenets.  Being rational and liberal doesn't mean believing that every 
culture is of equal value.

 

I hate to violate Godwin's rule but the Nazis cited scientific reasons for what 
they did, at least some of the time. Should we therefore persecute science, 
because the "apologists" say it wasn't real science?

 

All he's saying is that these people aren't practicing the same religion as the 
vast majority of Muslims.

 

That's not at all clear though.  Throughout the Islamic mideast the prevailing 
opinion seems to be "What did they expect?  Of course if you insult the Prophet 
someone will kill you."  

 

Yeah you may be right, although that may just be realism in that they know 
there are fanatics, rather than agreement with said fanatics.

 

Contrast this with Catholics.  Charlie Hedbo frequently satirized Catholicism, 
but no Catholics so much as even advocated violence against the staff.   

 

Not nowadays, no. You have to go back a way before Catholics and protestants 
burned each other at the stake, thank - er- whatever.

 

It's encouraging that in this case some Islamic leaders have denounced the 
violence, but I think there are more that have condoned it.

 

Yes, I don't know, any statistics on that would be welcome. For information 
purposes here is another article on the same subject, which comes to roughly 
the same conclusion - that the point was poiltical rather than religious -  
http://www.thenation.com/blog/194465/whats-real-reason-al-qaeda-attacked-charlie-hebdo?

 

“Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and 
totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and 
preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted 
purposes of a self-styled great leader.
The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah 
Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the 
impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to 
carry out identity-politics reprisals.

 

Compare and contrast something like this with the number of chldren dying each 
year from preventable diseases. That generally puts similar events into 
persective for me. The West wails and/or beats its chest when something like 
this happens, but stays silent on millions of innocent deaths every year.

 

I share that sentiment; western mass media seems to only care about loss when 
it is their loss. 

And, in cases, such as this recent act of terrorism, the reflexive Neocon clash 
of civilizations call goes out to solve the problem with yet more boots on the 
ground; invading yet more lands; haven’t we learned after bombing Iraq for some 
twenty five years (if you begin the count from the war’s first movement in the 
early nineties… and for thirty if you count the Iran-Iraq war, in which the US 
secretly armed and backed Saddam Hussein’s regime) that the muscular military 
option has only produced a de facto state of permanent war with no solution!  
Clearly the dismembered former nation state of Iraq is not better off now than 
it was before they got a massive dose of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but also the 
US, especially amongst industrialized countries has become changed for the 
worse; the loss of individual rights – even the age old right (from medieval 
times) of habeas corpus is under attack in this freedom loving country.

But hey it has been good for the MIC profit center –the US has not bombed Iraq 
into a magically becoming a “freedom loving western style democracy”, but a lot 
of money has been made by a very few people along the decadal road to failure. 
Permanent war is good for some business’ bottom lines; big fortunes have been 
made… at massive cost to the US economy and crumbling infrastructure, to Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and the American CFUs as well. CFU is an acronym George Bush 
senior used to use describing your average Joe; it stands for Cannon Fodder 
Units.

The world does not need another large scale war in the middle east; there are 
powerful forces that want that war however. Now talking – once again as they 
always do in times like these -- in Manichean terms about a clash of 
civilizations, and lining up support for the next major war. War is business; 
and these people mean business.

-Chris

 

Liz

 

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