meelash

There aren't more terrorist attacks, because the classification as "terrorist" is a false classification. In reality the same mindset, motives, situation, that allegedly drive "terrorists" drive the people who are committing murders of their friends/family/coworkers/random-people every day. When an act of violence is carried out by a Muslim-named individual with an ostensibly political motive, you classify that as terrorism, whereas the underlying psychosis that leads to the crime is the same as most other acts of violence. The manifestation of that psychosis has circumstances and external justification that are irrational, random, and individual to each person.

So this question is like asking, "Why aren't there more 5'7", 11 shoe size, blue sweater-ed murderers?" The fact that there are not more "terrorist attacks" is proof that the classification of "terrorist attacks" is an unnaturally narrow one, based on arbitrary features of the perpetrators.

I'm afraid you're comparing apples and oranges. The more analogous situation is laypeople reading scientific articles like this one. I imagine the same phenomenon would be observed.

Physicists at lectures are more analogous to other religious scholars (like from other sects). You'd find a lot more skepticism there than in religious lay-people who probably aren't very educated in theology.

The second comment on that page is the first thing I thought of.

Sensational headline, obvious results. Nothing much to see here, folks...

I think it should be stressed that these ideas are necessarily flexible based on the quality of the thing being disagreed with. Basically, Paul's assumed that the post being argued against is ideal, and against that has built his hierarchy. In real life, an effective argument, in fact sometimes the only possible argument, against a poorly formed thesis is a poor response.

For example, the conclusion that, "a DH2 or lower response is always unconvincing" is not true in the following case: Suppose someone posited that there is a blue species of monkey living in the basement below the U.S. Senate and the only reason he gave for us to believe him is that he is a trustworthy U.S. Senator. In disagreeing with him, if we bring an ad hominem attack against his trustworthiness it is entirely acceptable and relevant because his trustworthiness is the only proof he's brought in the first place.

I was nodding my head throughout most of this article until I got to this:

"the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims."

This kind of insane toeing of the official line of good vs. evil is exactly the counter-productive foolishness that allows the security services to carry on with their ridiculous "responses" to these events.

Putting our heads into the sand about the actions WE have taken and supported in the past 100 years that have motivated these attacks does no one more disservice than ourselves. Just a few weeks back there was an extremely revealing article with statistics on the number of Muslim civilians directly killed by American forces in the past 30 years and vice versa.

Even when these attackers ARE explicitly motivated by religion, it is on the basis of worldwide injustices of our government that that religious motivation is invoked. It is never a question of killing because that is all Americans are good for, as is often implied in pieces like this.