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eftychia at 04:17pm on 2009-06-01A Christian, active in his church as evidenced by the fact that he was an usher there, was murdered in cold blood yesterday right in his house of worship. A patently un-Christian act on the part of the terrorist who killed him.
So this isn't a "Christians are evil" thing (not that I'd stand for that anyhow, being a born-again Christian myself). The victim, portrayed as a good man by those who knew him and countless others thankful for the services he provided to those in need despite years of harassement and threats of violence, was a Christian. But since the killer appeared to have a religious motivation to use violence to intimidate others to further a political and/or religious agenda (hence terrorist), it is a "fundamentalists are dangerous" thing.
Oh yeah, and this was American-on-American violence. Domestic terrorism. Which are you more likely to be killed or wounded by, or lose a loved one to -- the domestic kind or imported?
And for all the right-wing rhetoric for the past nearly-nine-years about radical Muslim fundamentalists, this terrorist was a Christian, like his victim. We're going to have to take him at his word despite his act of sacrilege, as only he and the Lord know for sure, so this was Christian-on-Christian violence. Among religiously-motivated terrorists (or ones who have used religion as their excuse), who has killed more Americans, Christian terrorists or Muslim terrorists? (N.b.: I really don't know. Anybody have the answer within easy reach?) Which group has killed more Americans on American soil?
Oh, and the victim was a doctor. A doctor who performed abortions. "Late-term" abortions, the kind that, AFAICT, nobody ever wants to be in the position of needing, nor gets if there's any reasonable alternative, nor decides upon lightly. Wait, did I say "nobody", all generic-like? I mean no woman, since men doon't get abortions at all, and never have to face these decisions in this way (with the presumed exception of a very few really, really, really unlucky transmen, mentioned only in the interest of being as mathematically-correct as I can manage here).
One of a vanishingly small number of doctors performing such procedures, apparently (AFAICT) because decades of violence-or-threat-thereof -- terrorism -- had been effective in discouraging other doctors from offering the same service. A service that was already an ordeal to obtain on top of the pain and grief of having to make such a decision in the first place, will now be even more difficult? The amount of suffering in this world has been increased by more than just the death of that church usher and the grief of his family and friends; in addition to that suffering, unknown (but estimable) numbers of women who might have suffered a little less with this doctor's help, will instead suffer more.
"But what of the 'children'?" I can comprehend the moral calculus that says, "If I take this one life, many more will be saved, so even though murder is a sin it'll be a net gain for the world." I don't agree with it, but I comprehend it. But in the circumstances that lead to late-term abortions, is taking that option off the table actually going to save any babies-to-be? It doesn't sound like it will -- it'll just increase the risk of the mother's dying alongside the foetus, or suffering injury that'll make her unable to try again later for a healthy child, or just suffering more physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual pain and having to watch a doomed child suffer as well; not save any children's lives. "Convincing" someone not to terminate a pregnancy gone that far wrong -- be it by rhetoric or by making the procedure unattainable through legislation or fear -- doesn't magically repair all the medical problems that made the pregnancy unsafe or non-viable in the first place.
So the moral calculus is broken because it starts off with a faulty assumption. No good can come of this. Even from a utilitarian perspective, this murder was wrong.
The only way this act makes any sense is to start off by saying, "Suffering doesn't matter; even death doesn't matter; all that matters is how often one particular act that I believe to be a sin occurs, regardless of any outcomes, and repercussions, any consequences." Or maybe, though I hate to think this is it, "Life and death don't matter; only this one sin, and that women suffer."
(Which ties into something I'd been meaning to write for quite a while...)
Why does, "Women must suffer because my religious belief allows no shades of grey, no examination of outcomes, and no possibility that I've somehow gotten it wrong, and everyone around me must act in accordance with my beliefs whether they believe the same things or not," sound familiar? Some other religious fundamentalists somewhere?
Here's my question: when it comes to religiously motivated (or religiously justified/rationalized) terrorism, regardless of which major faith is involved, have there been any non-fundamentalist religiously motivated terrorists? Any in the XXth and XXIst Centuries? (And no, I'm not limiting this question to the US. Do non-fundamentalists do these things?)
I dare say, while waiting for an answer to that, that the Problem -- the danger -- is not from Christianity as a whole, or Islam as a whole, or any other religion; nor is it religion itself (though I know at least two of my atheist friends will disagree there); rather, the problem is fundamentalism. Not that every fundamentalist is violent, and maybe not even that fundamentalism always eventually produces violence, but that fundamentalism is a precondition for this sort of thing -- or if it turns out not to be an absolute requirement, that it at least greatly increases the likelihood of violence (and on a larger scale, the abandonment of problem-solving and useful communication in favour of entrenched ideological positions and lots of, "la la la I can't hear you").
And not just religious fundamentalism. Folks who insist, against all evidence, that unadulterated communism, or socialism, or capitalism, is The Only Way, and shut out any possibility of taking the most effective aspects of each and applying them in different combinations to different types of problems ... folks who insist that if only we adhered to the stripped down, untainted form of direct democracy, libertarianism, anarchy, etc., we'd have a paradise with no funky cracks or corner cases or abuses of the system ... that government is Always [more | less] efficient than private enterprise, in all things ... even (though as far as I know this one doesn't lead to gunfire) folks who insist on an Absolute Adherence to goto-less programming, pretending that the handful of cases where a labelled jump makes things more maintainable will never ever arise, or that their One True Pedagogy is the only way that any student should be taught regardless of different students' different ways of absorbing knowledge and skills, or that the law and morality are the same and neither has any grey areas, or that banjos and bagpipes can absolutely never be used in rock and roll.
(Okay, I can see that last one maybe leading to a stabbing...)
That combination of absolute faith, a stripped-down, simplified model, and militant inflexibility, seems to be at best unhealthy and maladaptive and at worst a route to terrorism, civil war, genocide, and holy wars. I think the biggest human problem we have right now is fundamentalism in its various incarnations in various fields of thought. I suspect that fundamentalism is inherently harmful. Whether it's religious, political, economic, or whatever.
But I think I can see what makes fundamentalism seductive. So I'm not sure how to get rid of it.
(no subject)
Between the KKK and various aspects of the genocide of the First Nations, I'm pretty sure that more Christian terrorists have killed Americans on American soil by several orders of magnitude than every other flavor of terrorist combined. (I think that holds true even if someone wants to somehow exclude the First Nations from the category "Americans" -- the KKK and their ilk have spent an awful lot of time killing an awful lot of people.)
(no subject)
(no subject)
There's nothing wrong with mind control & censorship. As long as they're *my* brands of mind control & censorship.
From flaviarassen
and for having to actually work for a system that really works.
But this crime exposes as few others the insane hypocrisy of the
anti-choice movement. I hope Kansas has the death penalty.
(no subject)
reply from maugorn
It's easy to believe that by following "The Rewells" that we will act "Correctly" and "Do The Right Thing".
In order to prevent people from acting horribly to each other, we make up these rules and laws and naively believe that they solve our problems.
If we don't know what to do, we consult the "Rewells" so that we know how to act or react "Correctly".
The problems come when we humans (filled with hubris) believe that a rule that we create with our words is big enough to apply to the whole of the Universe, and believe (filled with hubris) that our understanding of the "Way Things Are" is sufficient to decide that "what we know right here, right now" is never going to need to evolve.
And what too many people never realise is that it's not the "Rewells" that solve our problems, it is WE who must solve our problems, and that the "Rewells" are a TOOL that we use.
We naively place MORE value on understanding the "Rewells" than we do on clear and compassionate thought. And that's how we are led astray by maladaptive people who can play the "Rewells" to their advantage and manipulate us into believing that investing *them* with power is the "Correct" thing to do, and thus wind up (unsurprisingly) in situations where we empower them to order us to do things that are actually repugnant.
Hence my suspicion when anyone says that it's the "Word Of God" or the "Correct" thing to do- that we do something horrible. There will always be difficult choices in life and consequences to deal with for choices we make. And it's a blessing to have the guidance of our Ancestors, Thinkers, and Prophets to use in making our decisions. But when doing the "Right" thing makes less sense than breaking the "Rewells", that's when MORE questions need to be asked and not fewer.
And yet we are so easily seduced into heeding the call to NOT think in these situations and do what is "Correct"- which most of the time is simply something that someone in Power has Told us to do. And at that point, when you're "just following orders", and doing something you know is wrong but placing the Rules before it, you ARE ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE, because AT THAT POINT, you're assuming that this "Rule" or "Order" you're following is so big, so eternal, so strong, that you can insist now that the Universe conform to YOUR WILL rather than evolving your understanding. Rather than face the cognitive dissonance, and grow in your understanding, you believe that the imprint of your puny handful of molecules will transcend YOUR misunderstanding of the Universe that you know you're experiencing. THAT is Hubris. It's maladaptive, and most religions consider it a sin.
The way to get rid of fundamentalism?
1) Teach people from an early age that God and the Universe is so mindbogglingly big that ANY understanding we have is likely to be imperfect, limited, and WILL eveolve as WE evolve. That our inevitable subjectivity is our call to humility.
2) Foster a wholescale reset of our attitudes such that we respect true and honest leadership but dis-establish Heirarchical Authority as a Societal Norm.
Re: reply from maugorn
"They told me it was too mindbogglingly big to understand, but I've had The Insight that makes it all simple after all! They're going to be so glad I solved this problem for them!"
There's a seductive aspect to the idea that, "I've figured out what all these people around me haven't, and it's so simple; my insight will revolutionize everyone's thinking, and I must share it," sort of prophet trap. Boom, back to the hubris you pointed out again, and the accompanying zealotry, the urge to push this idea on "those fools who refuse to see" this beautiful simplicity the prophet is trying to share, "for their own good" ... and anyone who resists becomes an enemy of that "good", thus those who insist that it's really not as simple/un-nuanced/rigid as the prophet thinks, are "evil" because they're standing in the way of this grand new (or old and rediscovered) fundamentalism that the prophet has been blinded by.
... And thus the fundamentalism we tried to get rid of comes back again, because one of the things humans are good at -- oriented toward -- is discovering or inventing patterns to make sense of the world, and we will see false patterns in noise, and we will sometimes be seduced by them.
I'm not sayin' there's nothing we can do; just pointing out that it'll be a continual struggle for as long as we remain human. We might still be able to make the problem of fundamentalism smaller than it is now.
(no subject)
Oh, yes. An example which is particularly salient to me right now: the IRA. On Sat I took a course for emergency response volunteers, and one of the things they noted to us was that we were never, ever, ever to "self-deploy" to the scene of a disaster, because the technique, premiered by the IRA, of setting off one bomb, waiting for the ambulance crews and firefighters to arrive, then setting off the other, to kill as many civilian first-responders as possible. Bombs being too obvious, they and other terrorist orgs moved on to creating crises which looked like accidents or natural disasters to "attract emergency resources" into a blast radius.
The IRA defines itself as nationalist and ethnic, not religious; they don't claim to be motivated by the dictates of their god. They clearly aren't fundamentalists.
But the ethnicity they are fighting for the ascendency of is, in the field, strongly, or even primarily, identified as that of Catholics as opposed to Protestants. It's about religion-as-culture instead of religion-as-belief-system.
Meanwhile, it's worth noting how the Protestant majority in this country terrorized the Catholic minority in ther early years of the 20th cen. I'm not sure it was that century or just over it into the previous that a group of Protestants here in Boston got themselves convinced that the local Ursuline convent (in Somerville, MA) was killing babies in the basement or some such, so showed up one night and burned it to the ground.
So, yeah, I don't think "fundamentalism" gets the whole of the rap. [Palm buffer too small for more examples.]
(no subject)
"religion-as-culture instead of religion-as-belief-system"
I had been thinking of the Troubles in Ireland as having been more political than religious, despite having been aware of the Protestant-vs-Catholic aspect. A good thing about exposing my ignorance: sometimes I get educated as a result. And as examples go, that's a pretty significant one, considering its duration.
"So, yeah, I don't think 'fundamentalism' gets the whole of the rap"
I thought it would, but didn't know. My first hypothesis is rebutted. Thank you. My secondary hypothesis, that even without being a necessary precondition fundamentalism makes terrorism more likely, I'm still wondering about.
The other examples of patterns of terror without an obvious religious-fundamentalism alignment that come to mind are systemic uses of violence by whites to keep PoC afraid (by organizations such as the KKK, and spontaneously arising out of the culture as a whole), and gay-bashing (amplified, I think, by vitriolic anti-gay preaching, but I suspect often carried out by not-especially-churchy types). OT1H, I think that the former stems (to the extent that it wasn't originally economic[1]) from a "racial purity" meme that can legitimately be characterized a racial/racist/racialist fundamentalism; and the second stems from pervasive gender-essentialist (gender fundamentalist) memes in our society -- I did observe that there are more kinds of fundamentalism than religious. OTOH, I'm waiting for the ref in the replay booth to tell me whether classifying those as fundamentalism-based is going to get me a moving-the-goalposts penalty. (In both of those cases I get the impression[2] that the religious justifications serve, rather than cause, the racialist/gender fundamentalism.)
I do see the same "it's all really simple, here are a few absolute and inflexible rules, and everyone who refuses to enforce these rules for me is evil" pattern in the cluster of racist memes that seems (to me) to be connected to acts of racist terrorism, and in patterns of gay-bashing, bombing gay bars, etc., so I'm inclined to call them instances of fundamentalism. I just need to make sure that I'm fitting my hypothesis to the world, not reinterpreting the world to fit my hypothesis.
[1] To some extent, early post-slavery terrorist and exploitative racists "had to" do things to keep African-Americans "in their [economic] place" to avoid having familiar economic structures come crashing down around their ears once [explicit] slavery was taken away. Replacing slavery-qua-slavery with systems that kept lots of African-Americans incarcerated and then using prison labour, and using racial terrorism to keep African-Americans from challenging those and other institutions effectively, allowed some of the preceding economic structures that had relied on slavery to persist. I don't think that's the whole story, but AFAICT it was a large factor, and made it harder for the other factors to fade out over time as they should have.
[2] Subject to the usual "not an historian nor an anthropologist" gaps in my knowledge, of course.
from BunnyJadwiga
Replace "religious" with "scientific" (in which case, science is the religion in question) and you've covered an awful lot of ground there.
Re: from BunnyJadwiga
Worse, I've seen these types of unscience from folks who really ought to know better, whose very professions rely so heavily on the real science of others, like doctors. Often.
Tangentially, when I called someone on the "folks in the middle ages had to use so many spices to mask the taste of rotting meat" bogon in AEU a few weeks ago, they attacked my writing style as an excuse to not have to review the cherished beliefs they'd learned from their third-grade teacher, ignoring my logic and my references. It seems there's a type of rigidity there that goes with the science-as-religion thinking that I think you're talking about, though I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion about what you were referring to.