What-aboutery
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
You then raise a totally different subject, and try to get everybody to focus on it - hoping it will distract attention from your own deflated case.
Isn't this just a Red Herring fallacy?
From Wikipedia: Red herring (logical fallacy), a deliberate attempt to change a subject or divert an argument
I've seen that even in non-ideological areas, for people with "too large" verbal talent, which believed their own bullshit. But that might pass with age.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. -- Steven Weinberg
It's Steven.
In the first comparison we compare two groups, we find both with the ability to do moral acts. Next we compare the two groups again, but this time we are surprised when we find both groups are capable of non-moral acts. Also, we jump from a simple comparison of believers and non-believers to the use of god's name.
The point just doesn't say much more than, "people are capable of good and evil". A religious person would only become troubled that evil people are misappropriating their belief system to back their evil acts. i.e. Hitchens point will not faze a religious person.
A better response would be to show in the positive that a similar morality to Christianity can be built from a few well reasoned assumptions. This would address the GP's wish to show that morality is not dependent on a religious system. It is important to remember, from a religious persons perspective morality is defined by God. Responding with annoyance gets one nothing and shows that a person may be vulnerable to the same shortsightedness.
Yeah, I guess so, but that was implied by the OP.
The one who raises the question against God in effect plays God while denying He exists. Now one may wonder: why do you actually need a moral law giver if you have a moral law? The answer is because the questioner and the issue he or she questions always involve the essential value of a person. You can never talk of morality in abstraction. Persons are implicit to the question and the object of the question. In a nutshell, positing a moral law without a moral law giver would be equivalent to raising the question of evil without a questioner. So you cannot have a moral law unless the moral law itself is intrinsically woven into personhood, which means it demands an intrinsically worthy person if the moral law itself is valued. And that person can only be God.
Our inability to alter what is actual frustrates our grandiose delusions of being sovereign over everything. Yet t he truth is we cannot escape the existential rub by running from a moral law. Objective moral values exist only if God exists. Is it all right, for example, to mutilate babies for entertainment? Every reasonable person will say “no.” We know that objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God must exist. Examining those premises and their validity presents a very strong argument. "
RZIM.org
Anti-social elements will not survive long on their own. People/animals who work together has a better chance of survival. Those who can't work with others, are therefore removed (gradually) from the gene pool.
Anyway, it is very dangerous to base morals on religion. Only religion can make someone say "It's wrong to kill people, unless they believe in another religion"... What is the moral basis for that? If you removed religion from politics, they would not be able to say that.
That kind of disrespect beckons retaliation of some kind. Since Mr. Hari is safely out of reach in the UK, the only response is to openly dis the UK - even if it means dredging up stories from WWII.
By the way, I did not read this 'Dark Side of Dubai' article you mention and I have no idea therefore what was said in it.
Not for everyone it doesn't. It's highly dependent on culture, and it's personal too. When 37 signals criticized Get Satisfaction, Get Satisfaction replied with grace, and addressed the points raised by 37 Signals. Of course it wasn't perfect, but it certainly didn't fall in the camp of retaliation.
This spirit of vengefulness has gotten worse as the city has mushroomed with foreigners who now outnumber locals 20 to 1, making them a small minority in their own city. Their culture and way of life are under attack, from their own leaders' ambitions.
"Look at my perpetual motion machine!" "What about the cable plugged into the outlet?" "Don't change the subject!"
"You are a murderer because you killed Mr. Jones." "What about the fact that Mr. Jones broke into my house and was trying to rape my wife?" "Two wrongs don't make a right!"
Certainly it can be abused but very often the "what about x" argument can be a valid way of introducing new and relevant information.
This new article is a calm discussion about rhetoric and dealing with trolls, something HN seems quite interested in.
(I thought his Dubai piece was long on opinion and short on facts, but that is neither here nor there.)
Al Qassemi seems to say that one could draw a similarly broad and misleading conclusion about Britain. Maybe Hari should at least address this point. I mean, he hints that the answer is yes, and such a conclusion is valid, but he never says it.
EDIT: On second thought, I'm making exactly the same mistake he's pointing out.
Congratulations on recognizing that.