Show that there is *religiously* motivated violence

@wynn --

Well when the religious text in question, which is held by it's adherents to be infallible, tells you to kill heathens and apostates, how is it not religious motivation for such actions?

 

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Granted, if there would be no golf, then you couldn't have an aversion to golf.
But you might be having an aversion to something else.

If golf would be the cause of aversion (and actions due to it, such as turning off the tv), then everyone would have an aversion of golf. Which is, clearly, not the case.

So there seems to be something about you, and not about golf, that causes you to turn off the tv when golf is on.

You mean something like when a religious person bullies a non-religious person, and the non-religious person hits the religious person - then this is an example of religiously motivated violence?

Where we might differ is an understanding of what goes for "religious."

 

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@wynn --

Luckily for you lot it is a wonderfully fluid term. If we're talking about a religion that actually encourages the slaughter of innocents through it's holy texts then you say "oh but it wasn't his 'faith' that motivated the violence, so it wasn't religiously motivated", but when it comes to events like this one it becomes "oh that wasn't his religion causing the violence, he was just insane." You can't have it both ways.

 

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Religious texts and traditions also tend to specify who is fit to carry out which instructions.


For example, one of the Bodhisattva vows is to kill a person who contemplates to harm others.

There is a story where the Buddha and several people were together in a boat, and one person intended to kill others - and the Buddha killed him before he could carry out that act.

The qualification for carrying out the instruction to kill someone who intends to harm others, is that one be a Bodhisattva. Which is a qualification not easy to obtain.

Moreover, being killed by such a qualified person is also stated to be beneficial for the killed person.

For example, God is sometimes said to kill demonic people - and this way, those people automatically are promoted to heaven.


It would be inadequate to look only at the scriptural instructions to harm or kill, but ignore where those same scriptures specify who is qualified to do so, in what circumstances, and what the consequences are.

 

And you seem to be intent on the political use of it.

 

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Have I just shown that men with moustaches cause violence?

Do we now have sufficient data to incriminate others?

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Or should we treat them as exceptions to the rule?

 

Note that Shelton's own attorney "pleaded for a verdict of not guilty due to insanity."

 

@wynn --

Two of the most popular ones don't, the bible and the koran.

So....one of the Bodhisattva vows is to kill everyone then? And how, exactly, is this making your case because from where I'm standing it looks like you're arguing my side. Did we switch when I wasn't looking?

This line of argumentation would only work if both people accept some form of life after death, and given that I don't because there's not a shred of evidence for it, dropping this line would save us both time. You would make the argument, I'd demand that you demonstrate that there is an afterlife(what form it takes is irrelevant for now), you'd sputter and evade because you're unable to do so....been there, done that, got the t-shirt, had sex in the confessional. Frankly it's getting old, so let's just leave this one here for now.

You, sir, haven't read much of the bible have you?

Pretty much the entirety of the OT consists either of god being, and let's be kind about this, a massive cunt to everyone(he moves on to fucking up his familial relations in the NT) or of god either ordering his people to slaughter others by the bus load or by doing it himself. Yeah, the bible and the koran aren't exactly big on that whole "peace" thing that their adherents like to bang on about.

And just to forestall any arguments of Jesus undoing the old commands, he never did that at all. Nothing he says can reasonably be considered a revocation of the OT commandments and he even explicitly commands his followers to hold to each of them, that(and I quote) "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled".

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From the koran:

Allah is an enemy to unbelievers. - Sura 2:98

On unbelievers is the curse of Allah. - Sura 2:161

Slay them wherever ye find them and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. - 2:191

Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme.
(different translation: ) Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is God's entirely. - Sura 2:193 and 8:39

Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. - 2:216
(different translation: ) Prescribed for you is fighting, though it is hateful to you.

From the bible:

Deuteronomy 17
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant; 17:3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; 17:4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel; 17:5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.

 

@wynn --

What I'm intent on doing is preventing you from nitpicking about definitions using vagaries that you built into your own argument(I suspect on purpose) in order to avoid having to actually support it.

Unfortunately for Shelton, there's a long historical precedent that religious beliefs are not a form of insanity, not legally anyways.

@lightgigantic --

OH SWEET EVIL JESUS!!!

Do you never tire of straw man arguments?

 

Sure, and that thing would provide different motiviation.

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Why should one person's motivation be held by others.
By your arguments, religion does not motivate me at all - therefore by your argument religion does not motivate anyone???
You are, afterall, proposing that if it holds for one it must hold for all in order to be valid?

Sure - it is that golf motivates me to turn off the television.
What motivates is a personal / subjective thing.
There is no objective motivation, which seems to be what you're looking for.
As said previously, if you wanted the thread to merely be "does religion propose violence?" then that is different to whether it motivates an individual.

One can not say yes or no to this without understanding the individuals.
If it is bullying that has nothing whatsoever to do with religion then clearly religion is not a motivator.
But if the bully has been raised to dislike all those of opposite faiths then the bullying is religiously motivated. The defender is merely defending themself from the bully, whether religious or not. So while they may not see the actual violence as religiously motivated, the instigation of the violence would be.

So would it not be an idea to explain just what you mean by religious.
I also hold that your current view of what constitutes motivation is limited.
You seem to be looking for a sole/key motivator without appreciating that such matters are complex, and it is rarely clear what is key.

But any lack of clarity should not mean that you discount it as not happening.

 

Are you aware of the enormous qualifications that are required for one to be a Bodhisattva?

I remember years back, at a multi-denominational Buddhist forum, the topic of the Boddhisattva vows, the one about killing, was discussed.

And my and many other posters' immediate reaction was - "Does that mean that all the Tibetan and Mahayana Buddhists are free to kill us and we must let them?!"

This is the pattern for what seems to be a common reaction to notions of religious violence - namely that the religious are somehow divinely instructed to be violent toward others, and that other people are expected to submit to the religious.

As if the religous would be saying "I can kill you, and you have to let me!"
and the non-religious would then try to outargue the religious - "No, you are not justified to kill me! Here's why - there is no scientific evidence that you possess these powers or that killing me will ..."


There are three common ways people reply to bullies, or when they feel bullied:

Your approach is the one sketched out in no. 2, just like mine was years back, while now I am aiming for the one in no. 3.

Let's say that I am not as emotionally attached to it (in love, or in hate) as some people.

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Whom are these instructions addressed to?

 

A frequent argument made by some people is that religion motivates people to violence; according to them, that same person, but without religion, would not be violent, while with religion, they are.
This is the notion we're exploring in this thread.

What is religious about being raised to dislike all those of opposite faiths?

Noted earlier:

- the essence of religion is service to God, and part of that service is recognizing all living beings as God's children.

I am doing that? Really?

Why don't you take on Arioch, for example?

I have made clear many times that violence happens in the name of religion.
But that doesn't necessarily make it religiously motivated.

 

@wynn --

Nope, but that's irrelevant because you totally missed my point. Every single living human that is capable of thought is guilty of contemplating harming another, or even killing them. Indeed most of us think such thoughts on a daily basis. My point was that one of the vows is to kill those who contemplate harming others, but in fulfilling such a vow you would have to take every single human life(except for coma patients, perhaps) on the planet, including your own.

The qualifications necessary are irrelevant, as are the justifications, it's the vow itself that is absurd.

Irrelevant because I gave you two examples of what supposedly are divine instructions for followers to kill unbelievers, the koran and the bible. You truly are the master of the red herring aren't you(no, just joking, your crown is safe LG).

No, my approach isn't number two, it's number four. Wait for the bully to do something stupid and then give him a ride in an ambulance. It's a great choice because I only have to do it once per social groups as opposed to repeating the process with every bully. This argument, laughable as it is(pop-psychology is almost universally laughable), is still a logical fallacy. In this case the fallacy of the false dilemma wherein you offer us choices but artificially limit the choices.

So you want to discuss religious topics online and have been selecting or creating threads which either center on the concept of religious violence or have moved on to it and yet you haven't read either of the holy books of the two most popular religions on the planet? Not exactly a good game plan. Seems like you're arguing more for your religion than for religion in general.

Deuteronomy was originally addressed to all of the Hebrews, it was their law. And it is addressed to all christians later by the way of Jesus' words.

The message of the koran, all of it, is addressed to the believers, all of them.

 

I see no such notion in the OP:

And subsequent posts only allude to it, primarily when one such as yourself looks to back away from countering the argument that religion may be a motivation for violence, if not the key motivator.

If you wish to suddenly change the tack of the thread to exlude such arguments, perhaps you should start another thread and be more precise.

Further, when previously explained that your OP offered a false-dilemma (as you now claim the notion being explored in this thread is) you merely said:

You are seemingly being contradictory merely to avoid having to counter arguments.

Even if the secondary root is the interpretation of the parent, the source is still religious in nature.
Further, there are passages in both the bible and Koran that sanction and encourage violence, if taken literally. E.g. Koran 4.89

And? If someone is motivated by that to be peaceful to others then that peace is religiously motivated. If other people use passages of scriptures to motivate them, then those actions are still religiously motivated, even if their understanding of the religious principles differ to yours or are unique to them.

He is arguing along the lines of religion being a key/sole motivator... I am taking a different tack: that religion is a motivator. Since if religion is a key/sole motivator then it must, by definition, be a motivator, then the arguments are not necessarily counter. If he demonstrates his point then mine is demonstrated by default. But both arguments are counter to yours.

It rather depends if the decision to act is made before the named justification (religion) or not.
If religion forms part of the decision-making process then that decision IS motivated by it.
So if you wish to claim that the decision is not in any way motivated by religion then you would need to demonstrate that using religion as justification comes after the decision-making process.

Would the same decision have been reached without religion? Possibly. But that is not to say it is not a motivator, just that it is not key.

 

Thanks, dad.

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The mistake is all yours, if you think that I have taken the side that religion is not a motivator for violence.

I want to understand both the arguments for why religion can be understood as a cause for violence, and arguments against.

You should know by now that I don't think in black and white terms. And that I rarely take sides, if ever.

This is a rather mundane notion of religiousness, then.

Sure. Can you explain what is religious about that?
Other than that it is written in a book that by some people is considered religious?

That is like saying that people are motivated to be violent because they watch films about violence; or that people are motivated to be obese because they watch films about fat people; or that they are motivated to be happy because they watch films about happiness.

I'd sooner think that the desire to do this or that was present in the person to begin with, and that watching the film only gave suggestions on how to act on said desire.

I imagine similar happens when reading religious scripture.

A readily observable phenomenon is that different people can read the same scriptures and come away with very different instructions/ideas for how to act.

One person picks up the sword, another dons the robes of a monk, another makes an effort to be kinder to his children ...


If religion would truly be a motivator, then there should be some uniformity in how people act after having read scriptures.
Yet we observe that there is variety.

 

Yet everything you have written so far says to the contrary.
How else are we to judge your views if not by what you write?

Why should I know by now?

No, it is a notion of what counts as religious motivation, and then the judgement is whether it is a strong motivation or not.

What more is needed? Who are we to say what one considers to be religious or not. That they are motivated by what they see as religion is sufficient.
Unless you wish to insist on a single understanding of "religious" and what is allowed as a religious influence?

Not at all... it depends upon what their brain, their thought patterns, use and take note of in making their decisions.
If they commit violence because, in either a strong or weak way, they have seen violence committed on television then yes, this would indeed have been a motivation.
Again, despite your words to the contrary, you seem fixated on a single motivator to an action.

I.e. Motivated them to act in a certain way rather than another. :shrug:

Which merely means that how one is motivated is subjective, and not objective as you seem to argue they should be. But this does not alter that they are all motivated IF their actions are a response to it (directly or indirectly).
Following your argument to the extreme, anything which doesn't motivate everyone in the same way is demonstrably not a motivating factor??

 

well, as an example, if you want to argue that the perpetrators of 9-11 committed the act due to islam then you have to explain why 99.9% of muslims are not engaged in such acts (and even why the perpetrators of 9-11 are protested against and even persecuted by other muslims).

Are all muslims like John Lennon with a moustache, merely sleeping giants ready at some inevitable point to take the path of hitler or stalin ... or are the acts of violence essentially catalyzed by an integral political component that for the most part posters on this thread are failing to consider for the sake of upholding a critique on religion?

 

@lightgigantic --

A straw man and now a red herring, I was right not to give your title of King of Fallacies to someone else.

 

so you don't think 9-11 is a good example of religious motivated violence?

 

@lightgigantic --

I've already given you a perfect example of religiously motivated violence in this very thread. You know, where that old Eagle Scout blew his roommate away because he was an atheist.

But if you want to talk large examples we could start with the classic Spanish Inquisition. Or how about the RCC's complicity in aiding the Nazi Holocaust? That one's a good one. And of course, Hitler's antisemitic ramblings are stolen, word for word in some cases, from some of the "greatest" christian thinkers, thinkers like Martin Luther.

And you're honestly going to sit here and tell me that religion doesn't cause violence?