Show that there is *religiously* motivated violence
- Thread starter wynn
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Its diversity and the unknown within it certainly motivate us.
A better example is "Planet Earth exists and we don't know everything about it. Therefore, it motivates us..."
One could argue that the motivation is a need to satiate a desire to know everything, but it is the Earth itself that provides some motivation to explore that rather than anything else.
In what way do the stone and puddle require reading and interpretation, and speak to our needs? :shrug:
Oh, that's right. They don't.
A better example would be: there is a puddle of mud in the street. I am wearing expensive shoes. I step to the side of the puddle. But in doing so I tread on an ant.
Did the puddle motivate me to tread on the ant?
Did the value of the shoes motivate me?
Was it my general upbringing that caused me to assign value to the shoes that motivated me?
What about the desire not to have to clean those shoes?
The ant is dead... it has had violence caused to it.
What is the motivator for that violence?
You could guess, and make a claim that one of those things in no way had any motivating influence.
Or perhaps you need to ask the person who caused that violence as to why they did so.
So you are arguing along the lines of religion not being the main motivator rather than merely a motivator!!
I didn't think you would so easily prove my point for me, but thanks.
But to answer - one would need to ask X:
If X says "I did this because the Lord God spoke to me to cleanse the world of evil, and my wife was a whore..." etc?
If X says "I whipped my wife for her adultery because it says to in the Koran/Bible/insert-other-scripture-here, and she died as a result" then there is main motivation of the adultery, mixed with the mental state of X, and additionally motivated by his understanding of the scripture he follows.
If X says that he was part of a devil-worshipping religion that required human sacrifice?
But instead you want to assign motivation without understanding the person?
Sarkus,
My bad. I used the word ''reason'' instead of ''motivating factor''.
But his motivation is due to his wifes behaviour, and saw fit to punish her
in a way that came from the scripture, so clearly he intended to harm her anyway. If he was a surgeon, he may have harmed her in a different way.
Would that mean that Surgery is the motivating factor of his actions?
How can we determine that he is actually telling the truth?
On the contrary.
jan.
My bad. I used the word ''reason'' instead of ''motivating factor''.
But his motivation is due to his wifes behaviour, and saw fit to punish her
in a way that came from the scripture, so clearly he intended to harm her anyway. If he was a surgeon, he may have harmed her in a different way.
Would that mean that Surgery is the motivating factor of his actions?
How can we determine that he is actually telling the truth?
On the contrary.
jan.
Then why would the Earth, the unknown, or the Bible?
(I'll address the rest later, depending on how you reply to this.)
And if the person thinks and says they have done nothing violent?
And a trainer whose last action would be to hit the horse?
Again, you're tacitly admitting that religious violence does exist. At some point, you imply, the trainer will hit the horse: perhaps even that he should hit the horse.
And we have done so, and we have made a pretty solid case. Let me break down your most recent stance:
"There is a stone on the ground. Therefore, the stone motivates me to throw it at someone."
Rather: "There is a stone on the ground. I believe in a credo that includes the meme that violence should be done to those not believing as I do. Therefore I pick up the stone and throw it at them."
You fail to recognize human imperative.
With some horses, hitting them to train them might be necessary. There are also horses that cannot be trained, and those get killed. This is how it is done.
Same principle applies at schools: teachers train students, with a variety of approaches and tools, and when the students fail to learn despite all that, they get expelled from the school.
No, this is your interpretation.
No, I imply no such thing.
If anything, I "fail" to take that supposed imperative for granted.
There is nothing about the stone that tells anyone to pick it up and throw it at someone. So the stone cannot motivate anyone to do anything.
Nor does a verse in the scriptures. A verse is just a verse, just like a stone on the ground is just a stone on the ground.
By your reasoning then, anything anyone claims to be a motivating reason for their action, in fact is a motivating reason for said action.
So these -
"I killed her because I was jealous of her. "
"I killed her because she made me angry."
"I killed her because she wore a pink shirt and I hate pink shirts."
"I killed her because she voted for Obama."
"I killed her because the little grey men told me to do so."
"I killed her because she refused to be my slave."
"I killed her because the Bible says to kill witches, and she was a witch."
"I killed her because she deserved it."
"I killed her because she exists."
"I killed her because I was under a lot of stress."
- would all be acceptable motivations.
The Law doesn't think so.
It seems rather that you are the one who refuses to understand the person, and instead you focus on a depersonalized concept of motivation.
Other than that, we are not trying to assign motivation, but looking whether there is anything about religion per se that could motivate people to commit violence.
I do believe that there are essentially only three motivations for the commission of violent acts: greed, anger and delusion.
It is under the influence of greed, anger and delusion that a stone or an axe become a murder tool and a line in a book an inspiration for killing.
Excepting of course that in religious dogma being expelled from the school is not the limit - nowhere near the limit - of potential retribution for crossing boundaries of certain pointless social anxieties.
Hence, the violence inherent in the system. It's a buffed-up "git 'er done".
This is one of the ways in which stones differ from belief systems: no one makes you get stoned. But a belief system imparts values in you didactically. No one is forced to become one with "stonism".
Excepting in the allegorical.
Well then, so is poverty and greed. Greed is just an emotion. Nothing about greed tells anyone to pick it up and commit white-collar savings-and-loans cleanouts, or to attack unbelievers in the street. Greed is only a word, a feeling. It doesn't force anyone to do anything. People choose that. Perhaps we should just incriminate free will instead, and get all the way to the bottom of the barrel in one go, since no one can by your stance really be made or encouraged to do anything.
Each system has its according means of correction, and sometimes, retribution.
The most a school can do is to expell a student.
The most the system of Western society can do is to kill a person, by law (capital punishment).
A person has the potential to overcome conditioning, so it is not true that conditioning would be all-powerful.
No, it is a lot more than just an emotion. It is an attitude, a state of mind, a set of beliefs about oneself and the world.
Like I said:
It is under the influence of greed, anger and delusion that a stone or an axe become a murder tool and a line in a book an inspiration for killing.
On principle, the Law thinks so too. The Law recognizes there can be diminished capacity, but it always defaults to free will.
Free will is where it is all at.
Then you are drawing parallels between the existence of capital punishment in Western society and the implied existence of religious 'correction' which, I add, includes capital punishment. Hence, religiously motivated violence exists.
I did not say that it was. This is your supposition. But you do seem to implicitly understand that it is a motivation; hence, religiously-motivated violence exists.
Religion shares those elements. However, it exists as a separate philosophy from greed. Unless all religion is merely greed?
Like I said:
The content of a stone or axe does not enjoin others to use it for violence, or to commit violence. It imparts no lessons, unless such lessons are inscribed upon it. It has no narrative. Religious books do have a narrative, and those who enjoin others to follow that narrative. If axes had the same, one could say that the existence of such axes motivated violence.
But, according to your postulates above, one is as free to follow greed as one is religion. If your argument is that religion forces no one to act on its violent writings, then the same can be said of the much more nebulous greed.
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We aren't talking about crimes, just disobedience. You can't go to jail for that.
Yes, exactly! That's what religion tells them and some of them believe it and follow through with it. We call that religiously motivated violence.
Can be, but not necessarily needs to be. They might be lying. Only they would truly know, if even they do. Perhaps a psychologist might garner some insight.
Where does the Law lay down what is considered motivation or not?
One of the keys to establishing guilt in Law is to establish MOTIVE.
And what motivates someone is subjective to that person.
If the prosecutor can show that one of the items on your list is sufficient motivation for that person to have killed - then yes, the Law would take it.
Sayeth the person who previously argued that if religion was a motivator then everyone would be motivated in the same way?
Do you know how everyone works, what drives everyone? You seem to think you do, as you seem to want to negate their own claims that they were motivated by religion.
Greed and anger, certainly, at a core emotional level. But not everything is given to us at such levels, but packaged in complex forms - such as entertainment, education, society, religion etc.
If any one of those creates feelings of anger or greed etc then even you would have to admit that they (the complex forms) motivate.
I am not sure delusion is such a core factor - at least not from the medical usage, which merely means accepting something as truth despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Delusion might lead to something else, however, just as religion, or society might lead.
Not necessarily.
It might be that his religion actually tells him that she should be harmed while he does not actually otherwise want to. Or that he is unsure and takes guidance of a suitable reaction etc.
We may not be able to. But it is a reasonable place to start. But are you suggesting you know better, without knowing the mind of that person?
Yet your words seem to suggest not.
In and of themselves, I can't imagine they would, for the same reason.
But it is in comparison, when judgement values are called into play, or whether they speak to some basic need we have.
Fulfilling the need could certainly be seen as the prime motivator (although in your other post you missed the more obvious motivator of fear) but what we experience helps shape what our needs are, how we control or satiate those needs, and how we react to situations, and thus act as motivators to a given situation.
And religion is certainly an experience.
Violence is rather seen from the perspective of the victim, not the perpetrator. So what the person thinks is somewhat irrelevant.
If people are to survive in this world on their own, ie. able to get a job, maintain a place to live, cook, get along with people etc., they need sufficient training, preferrably from early on.
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A crime is a (grave) disobedience.
You seem to be missing my point.
Or you really believe that people are per default incapable of discernment and should be presumed to be per default incapable of discernment.
Do you realize that you are implicitly arguing that religious scriptures have such immense power that when a person hears or reads a verse, they lose all power of discernment and cannot but act on their first impression of the verse?
You are arguing for a magical power of scriptures!
If that is so, then, per your idea and support to focus on the person, we have been wasting time and space all along, trying to analyze the possible motivations of the perpetrator!
So now it is the victim who decides what the motive for the transgression against them was?