Show that there is *religiously* motivated violence

[Sarkus]

LG, you do realise that noone is arguing the absolute claim that "religion teaches, encourages and motivates violence" but the claim that, in specific cases, violence has been motivated by individual's religious beliefs.

So by arguing against the former, as you very much seem to be doing by bringing in the argument that one is disparaging the wider religious community, you are merely arguing a strawman.

 

[Bells]

LG, you do realise that noone is arguing the absolute claim that "religion teaches, encourages and motivates violence" but the claim that, in specific cases, violence has been motivated by individual's religious beliefs.

So by arguing against the former, as you very much seem to be doing by bringing in the argument that one is disparaging the wider religious community, you are merely arguing a strawman.

Bingo!

I've been saying it for quite a while now.

That it is the individual who may find the motivation in how they interpret their religious text or their belief. And that is religious motivation.

To claim that someone cannot be motivated by their religious belief or religion to do something bad would also mean that someone cannot be motivated by their religious belief or religion to do something good for or to another.

The religion itself may be inherently good but somewhere, some twisted individual will interpret parts of it to give himself/herself permission to do something bad to another or to others. And it has happened throughout the ages. The Salem witch trials.. pious men and women who burned women, men and children at the stake because of superstition and the belief that because those people were different or may have believed in something different, they were witches and they went against the religious ideal at the time.

Religious motivation to commit crimes or to be violent occur on a small scale. Obviously. And the reason for that is because it is based on individual interpretation. Like the priest who, while performing an exorcism, to rid someone of what he thought were evil spirits or the devil, beats that person to death.. That is religious violence. He wasn't mugging her. His motivation was not to steal from her (greed) or to rape her (lust). His sole motivation was purely religious.. the removal of demons from a person's soul is religious to me. And the violent steps he took to make that happen is motivated by his religious beliefs. Or cults and religious groups who commit mass suicide to go and meet their maker. Suicide is a violent act against one's self and their motivation is purely religious. It doesn't have to be a widespread practice.

Religious motivation, whether it is to do something good or bad, is individual. And that is what Wynn and LG and even Gustav haven't exactly realised in this thread. Individuals can be motivated to commit acts of violence by a variety of things. Religion is not the exception.

 

[Gustav]

please refer back to my post to arioch
i was countering his claim that only one instance is required to debunk the notion that there is no "*religiously* motivated violence"

for instance ...i say "all swans are white" and someone produces a single black swan to counter my assertion, i will dismiss it as an aberration and freak of nature and maintain that proposition as true. if on the other hand i get sent to australia and observe a 2nd, 3rd or a multitude of black swans, i would be forced to revise my position.

as another example, i doubt if anyone would feel comfortable if i extrapolate that humans are cannibals by way of the donner incident

exceptions do not necessarily make the rule. if a general premise works for the most part we can hold it to be provisionally true and that is what this topic seems to be about, ascertaining the validity of a general proposition rather than disproving some abstract epistemological process of induction.

there is *religiously* motivated violence

seems trivially true to me. rigor might show otherwise

 

[Gustav]

Politics is merely a tool for the expression of religious hatred in this instance.

or vice versa i suppose

Security expert Abiodun Aremu also sees politics in the latest attacks. "We have looked at the pattern of this attack and discovered it is a ploy to achieve a political end," he told IOL. "It is clear Boko Haram is merely dropping religion as a shield and security agencies must dig deep enough to see beyond the so-called religious extremism."

Muhmmadu Buhari, former military ruler of Nigeria and leader of All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), shares the same view. "As far as I am concerned, politics is a strong factor in these clashes," he told IOL. Buhari, a two-time presidential candidate, is urging the government to investigate the roles certain politicians played in religious violence in the country. "It is disgusting to continue to blame religion for these crises when in actual fact certain selfish politicians are at the background. "The earlier we dig into what roles politicians play in them the better for this country."

Bauchi state, where the violence first erupted, has been in the grip of a political crisis since Governor Yuguda defected from the ANPP to join the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Youth in Bauchi have gone on rampage recently to protest Yuguda’s decision.

"Don’t forget these youths threatened to hit back at Yuguda," noted Mallam Musa Gani, the Bauchi State Chairman of the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), Nigeria’s largest network of election observers. "Can this be their response which could cost the governor his political future? Only members of this group can say."

Joe Igbokwe, chairman of Action Congress (AC), the ruling party in Lagos and Nigeria’s main opposition platform, does not rule out a possible link. He accused some politicians of pursuing "selfish agenda using religion to divide the masses."​

 

[lightgigantic]

LG, you do realise that noone is arguing the absolute claim that "religion teaches, encourages and motivates violence" but the claim that, in specific cases, violence has been motivated by individual's religious beliefs.

But then again that is an inaccurate analysis of the problem since there clearly must be more precise motivational aspects if they exist as an exception to the rule of a greater community of an identical religious community

So by arguing against the former, as you very much seem to be doing by bringing in the argument that one is disparaging the wider religious community, you are merely arguing a strawman.

By the same token one could argue that a parent who molests their children is motivated by parenthood. IOW not only is it a wild statement but it re-directs the proper attention needed in addressing the problem of violence.
IOW you are crippling the resolution process by designating an insufficiently capable cause.

Gustav's excerpt about the political issues of nigeria dressed up as religion is a good example

 

[lightgigantic]

Bingo!

I've been saying it for quite a while now.

That it is the individual who may find the motivation in how they interpret their religious text or their belief. And that is religious motivation.

To claim that someone cannot be motivated by their religious belief or religion to do something bad would also mean that someone cannot be motivated by their religious belief or religion to do something good for or to another.

The religion itself may be inherently good but somewhere, some twisted individual will interpret parts of it to give himself/herself permission to do something bad to another or to others.

If it is inherently good then something else must be at play to give it a bad slant.

Much like if parenthood is inherently about nurturing, something else must be at play to give it expression in terms of severe abuse

And it has happened throughout the ages. The Salem witch trials.. pious men and women who burned women, men and children at the stake because of superstition and the belief that because those people were different or may have believed in something different, they were witches and they went against the religious ideal at the time.

note the details

Political context

Andros was ousted in 1689 after the "Glorious Revolution" in England replaced the Catholic James II with the Protestants William and Mary. Simon Bradstreet and Thomas Danforth, the colony's last leaders under the old charter, resumed their posts as governor and deputy governor, but lacked constitutional authority to rule, because the old charter had been vacated. At the same time tensions erupted between the English colonists settling in "the Eastward" (the present-day coast of Maine) and the French-supported Wabanaki Indians in what came to be known as King William's War. This was only 13 years after the devastating King Philip's War with the Wampanoag and other indigenous tribes in southern and western New England. In October 1690, Sir William Phips led an unsuccessful attack on Quebec. Many English settlements along the coast continued to be attacked by Native Americans, including particularly the Schenectady massacre in the Colony of New York in 1690 and the Candlemas Massacre, an assault on York, Maine, on January 25, 1692.

Local context

Though the prior ministers' fates and the level of contention in the village were valid reasons for caution in accepting the position, the Reverend Parris only increased the village's division by delaying accepting his position in Salem Village. Neither had he any gift for settling his new parishioners' disputes; instead, by deliberately seeking out "iniquitous behavior" in his congregation and making church members in good standing suffer public penance for small infractions, he made a significant contribution toward the tension within the village, and the bickering in the village continued to grow unabated. In this atmosphere, serious conflict may have been inevitable.

And if you also read the link on religious context you will see that it is strife with political overtones

Religious motivation to commit crimes or to be violent occur on a small scale. Obviously. And the reason for that is because it is based on individual interpretation.

It is more directly based on political events that affect the individual ... especially clear when the acts of violence are localized to areas that bear the weight of the said political undertones

Like the priest who, while performing an exorcism, to rid someone of what he thought were evil spirits or the devil, beats that person to death.. That is religious violence. He wasn't mugging her. His motivation was not to steal from her (greed) or to rape her (lust). His sole motivation was purely religious.. the removal of demons from a person's soul is religious to me. And the violent steps he took to make that happen is motivated by his religious beliefs.

You want to discuss violence or malpractice?

Or cults and religious groups who commit mass suicide to go and meet their maker. Suicide is a violent act against one's self and their motivation is purely religious.

then why are they localized to individuals under the sway of particular charismatic leaders or personality cults?



It doesn't have to be a widespread practice.

Religious motivation, whether it is to do something good or bad, is individual. And that is what Wynn and LG and even Gustav haven't exactly realised in this thread. Individuals can be motivated to commit acts of violence by a variety of things. Religion is not the exception.[/QUOTE]

 

[Sarkus]

But then again that is an inaccurate analysis of the problem since there clearly must be more precise motivational aspects if they exist as an exception to the rule of a greater community of an identical religious community

The inaccuracy seems to be your insistence that there exists an identical religious community. If we were all clones, then perhaps you'd be on to something. But we each interpret things differently, and hence will be motivated differently by the same input.

By the same token one could argue that a parent who molests their children is motivated by parenthood. IOW not only is it a wild statement but it re-directs the proper attention needed in addressing the problem of violence.

Good job on pulling out a fallacious analogy!
Is there a handbook and guidance referred to as "parenthood"? Please provide it, as I seemed to have missed it.

IOW you are crippling the resolution process by designating an insufficiently capable cause.

Not at all. You seem merely to want to look at causes behind something motivating the way it does and refer to those as motivators rather than the thing itself.
You don't like the idea that religion can, in some cases, motivate to violence, so you are looking at deeper causes to assign as motivator.
But religion remains the motivator, and the underlying causes remain as underlying causes why the person is motivated that way.

One can always ask "why are you motivated by religion to do X as opposed to Y?" This will possibly get to the deeper root causes. But this does not negate religion being a motivator of, say, emotions that give rise to certain actions.

 

[GeoffP]

If there is a uniform religious population and only a handful are violent then its obvious there must be more precise motivations aside from religion.

And if a society engages in generalized religious discrimination, then there is no more precise motivation than religion. I think you're thinking of widespread or common rather than consistent.

If you are saying that x causes violence and you have a population designated x that aren't violent you have to explain what is holding them back (I offered that may be less religious then the violent ones since you are saying religion motivates violence)

Didn't understand your last sentence via the grammar: but see my point above.

I think you would have a hard time explaining religion as bereft of culture

Very good: then one cannot construe the two as nonoverlapping, or even independent.

I fail to see any expansion of violence divorced from politics ... in fact politics more accurately explains why some muslims are violent and others are not rather than the blanket designation of "muslim" designating the violence

Not really sure why you mention Muslim as opposed to Islamist or Islamists here. The former includes - I would think - includes all Muslims in religiously-motivated violence, which is flat out wrong. I make no such specification and I'm not sure why you are. Anyway, there is a plurality of violent social and political beliefs in these nations - and in others - and they appear to share a common religious bent: conservative, reactionary religious belief.

In short if diseased animals are off the menu then so are factory farms and their horrific lifestyle choice for their victims

Now I see your implication. Unfortunately, I have no way to say that diseased animals wouldn't be used in the creation of halal or kosher products: business is business, they say, and business must grow.

wtf?
vegetarians support meat eating?

?? They do? Can you explain this?

So if you were to get a bolt to the head for the sake of merely being eaten as opposed to getting your head chopped off, you would be grateful for being saved from an element of violence ...

I think I would greatly prefer neither, but if I were forced to choose, the former is obviously the superior choice from the perspective of suffering. Are you saying that if you were to be put to death, you would have no preference between stunning and having your head slowly sawed off?

or do you think that both acts are so violent that the difference is practically negligible?

Heh. No, I don't think that at all.

so, as but one guideline for kosher, you don't think having to wait 6 hours between consuming dairy and meat products, or even consuming meat products that are not properly executed in a particular fashion, would have any impact on consumption?

It would probably merely change the structure of the industries supporting such consumption. Help me here: is this theoretically reduced rate of consumption for the purposes of reducing net suffering, or for the satisfaction of the caprices of a theoretical deity?

Or that stricter standards governing living conditions (in terms of stricter avoidance of disease) grants a less barbaric existence for the victims?

Well, I think your assertion is unsupported. Do you have evidence of this? What sort of diseases is the industry underlying kosher/halal rearing detecting that go undetected in commercial rearing?

this has nothing to do with what I have posted.

Actually, your requests had nothing to do with what I posted: I was commenting on one of Wynn's initial premises. Let's stay on track here.

If are trying to argue that religion motivates violence you simply crippling the resolution process since conflict is initiated and maintained by politics.

Actually, there are innumerable cases of violence being initiated and maintained by religious figures. If you wish to call it violence, you must at the least define a range of what is "religious" and what is "political". For example: is the charitable support of the poor by funds collected by religious organizations inspired by religion or politics? Actually, I'd really like an answer to that last question.

Understanding this, many key players in violence direct attention to the so-called religious causes to keep the microscope off their antics
:shrug:

Can you support this assertion?

 

[GeoffP]

LG, I just want to say that I understand why you and Wynn are doing this: you don't like to think that violence might be inspired by religion, because it's not the way you see your own religion.

The problem, of course, is that others are not so kindly or even-handed.

 

[Big Chiller]

I wish that was the only reason, but the reason is that religion really doesn't motivate violence. Wait I don't wish that.

 

[Bells]

If it is inherently good then something else must be at play to give it a bad slant.

Much like if parenthood is inherently about nurturing, something else must be at play to give it expression in terms of severe abuse

Then what other slant is there for priests and pastors who beat and bash their church members in an exorcism?

What political slant is there for witch doctors to kidnap children in Uganda and kill them in sacrificial offerings to their Gods for their clients?

Individuals will act according to their wishes and their own motivations and some of those individuals will find religious motivation to do something inherently bad, even though millions of others do not find the same motivation from that particular religion. The person committing the act of violence is still religiously motivated. Ergo, it is still religious motivation for that individual.

And if you also read the link on religious context you will see that it is strife with political overtones

And?

The motivation for those individuals is still religious, even if it is mixed with political overtones.

Actions which may be in part political, violence with political overtones, where the perpetrator finds reason for his/her actions in their religious beliefs and what they believe as the "absolute truth" in their religious beliefs which for them, motivated them to commit the act.. that is religious motivation, even if other factors were also motivators.. It does not make their religious motivation any less real. I'll give you an example:

To get things started it took only ordinary religious belief, nothing all that uncommon in America today. It took Jones, with his fundamentalist belief that the creator of the universe relayed Absolute Truth to ancient prophets who then memorialized that Absolute Truth in literal form in what we now call the Bible. Such beliefs alone, of course, usually don't result in direct acts of violence or even much controversy.

In his unique understanding of scripture, however, Jones interpreted biblical truth as justifying, if not requiring, him to lead his followers in the act of insulting Muslims by burning the Koran. As such, the chain of irrationality was underway.

To continue the chain, we must go to the other side of the world where once again we find common, ordinary religious beliefs, nothing that would usually be considered inherently dangerous. We find the Afghans, with their fundamentalist belief that the creator of the universe relayed Absolute Truth to another prophet, Muhammad, who then memorialized that Absolute Truth in literal form in what we now call the Koran. Although these religious beliefs alone would normally be considered benign, the actions of the mobs certainly were not. Having heard about the disrespectful burning by Jones of their holy book, some of the Afghans felt justified, if not obliged, in reacting with violence and slaughter.

A secularist might be tempted, in the face of these events, to make a broad indictment of all religion, but to be fair we must acknowledge that such a reaction would be overly simplistic. Events such as these, when analyzed thoroughly, can usually be understood as resulting from complex factors of sociology, psychology, culture, and even economics. Surely, to place all the blame on religion alone would be hasty.

Nevertheless, just as it would be wrong to simplistically attribute the violence entirely to religion, it would be similarly inappropriate to deny the obvious religious connection. Any objective assessment, not just of these events but of religion itself, must seriously ponder the chain of causation that so often leads from religion to irrational violence.

[Source]

​

Pay particular attention to that last paragraph. That is what you seem to be denying.

It is more directly based on political events that affect the individual ... especially clear when the acts of violence are localized to areas that bear the weight of the said political undertones

Which does not mean that religious motivation was not also a factor in the conflict.

Just because there were other motivators does not mean that the religious compoment does not exist.

Your stance would be akin to saying that the violence and hatred between Jews and Muslims in Israel has nothing to do with religion at all.

You want to discuss violence or malpractice?

The religious motivation is still there.

then why are they localized to individuals under the sway of particular charismatic leaders or personality cults?

The point about religious motivation is that it is localised. It is individual.

You seem to be rejecting religion as a motivator for individuals because it is not on a large scale. The scale is irrelevant LG. What is relevant is the individual belief and whether that individual's religion played a part in motivating and justifying the violence. History is littered, hell, the bible is litered with religiously motivated violence... The story of Moses, of even Jesus Christ, has religiously motivated violence... It astounds me that you can actually reject it.

 

[Big Chiller]

Good job on pulling out a fallacious analogy!
Is there a handbook and guidance referred to as "parenthood"? Please provide it, as I seemed to have missed it.

So child abuse isn't blamed on parenthood just because it doesn't have tenets.

 

[GeoffP]

Gustav's excerpt about the political issues of nigeria dressed up as religion is a good example

Not particularly. What political reason is the basis for the religious conflict in Nigeria?

I wish that was the only reason, but the reason is that religion really doesn't motivate violence.

But some of it does.

 

[GeoffP]

please refer back to my post to arioch
i was countering his claim that only one instance is required to debunk the notion that there is no "*religiously* motivated violence"

for instance ...i say "all swans are white" and someone produces a single black swan to counter my assertion, i will dismiss it as an aberration and freak of nature and maintain that proposition as true. if on the other hand i get sent to australia and observe a 2nd, 3rd or a multitude of black swans, i would be forced to revise my position.

And this is another good reason to conclude that, Yes, Virginia, there really is religiously motivated violence. There have been a multitude of such.

 

[Bells]

please refer back to my post to arioch
i was countering his claim that only one instance is required to debunk the notion that there is no "*religiously* motivated violence"

for instance ...i say "all swans are white" and someone produces a single black swan to counter my assertion, i will dismiss it as an aberration and freak of nature and maintain that proposition as true. if on the other hand i get sent to australia and observe a 2nd, 3rd or a multitude of black swans, i would be forced to revise my position.

as another example, i doubt if anyone would feel comfortable if i extrapolate that humans are cannibals by way of the donner incident

exceptions do not necessarily make the rule. if a general premise works for the most part we can hold it to be provisionally true and that is what this topic seems to be about, ascertaining the validity of a general proposition rather than disproving some abstract epistemological process of induction.

there is *religiously* motivated violence

seems trivially true to me. rigor might show otherwise

That's the thing though, isn't it?

No one here is saying that religion itself is violent. What the greater majority are saying is that there are some people, individuals, do find motivation and justification in their religious beliefs to commit acts of violence. That is religiously motivated violence. It does not have to be recurring. That single act of violence can be religiously motivated, or more to the point, the perpetrator of said violence could be motivated by a variety of factors, religion being one of them.

To claim that there is no religiously motivated violence because it is not on a grand scale or that it is not recurring or to even say that that one act of religiously motivated violence is an aberration within the whole (to use your swan analogy) does not make that one act of violence not religiously motivated.

Wynn and LG are saying that there is no religiously motivated violence.. in other words, they are claiming that no person can ever be motivated by their religious beliefs to commit an act of violence. To the extent that a priest beating someone to death during an exorcism is not religiously motivated violence. It does not matter if all priests do not commit such crimes. That one crime was religiously motivated.

Your swan analogy is interesting. To claim that all swans are white and then to have a black swan appear does not make that black swan any less black, nor does it make it any less real. It does still exist, even if it is an aberration. And that is what Wynn and LG are unable to grasp. An aberration, the freak of the pack, does not make it any less real.

 

[Gustav]

....Beit Shemesh?

i have been following that shit
fascinating stuff
hilltop youth/price tag attacks/spitting haredim
must thread i guess

 

[James R]

Here are just a few particular examples from a particular batch of people - serial killers.

David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), murdered more than 10 women: "I was searching the bible and soul searching and I decided God wanted me to do that."

The Yorkshire Ripper murdered 11 girls. He "was on a divine mission and felt he had been chosen to hear the word of GOD" (Flint Journal).

Sampson Kanderayi, a mass murderer called The Ax Killer, killed more than 30 people. The newspaper reported "he did it to appease evil spirits." He was a Christian.

Watts (the Sunday Morning Slasher) killed 11 women. He reportedly did it "to eliminate evil spirits".

---

Has anybody mentioned Exodus 22:18 yet, and what it inspired and continues to inspire in some places? "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Perhaps lightgigantic ought to learn something about the persecution of witches and the Inquisition.

 

[Gustav]

and we have more......

Hitler was a very devout Roman Catholic. He and his men in charge of killing Jews were Catholic religious fanatics until death. Would more religious training and prayer in public schools have stopped him from being one of the most horrid mass murderers? Was religious training the catalyst that caused him to be so terrible?

Stalin went to Tiflis Theological Seminary to be a Christian minister. Would more religious training and prayer in public schools have stopped him from being one of the most successful mass murderers? Did early religious training make him so terrible?

/snicker


i cannot understand why this thread does not motivate tiassa to post a page full of shit. some input please

i mean...wtf?

 

[Sarkus]

So child abuse isn't blamed on parenthood just because it doesn't have tenets.

That's not what I said.
I am trying to get LG to establish how "parenthood" is analogous to a religion.
Then, if he can do that, he might want to provide examples of people claiming to commit child abuse because "parenthood motivated them".

 

[Bells]

i have been following that shit
fascinating stuff
hilltop youth/price tag attacks/spitting haredim
must thread i guess

I just find it horrendous that instead of going forward, they are going backward and it was only when the child was attacked that the Government and police decided to start to act. Prior to that, it was reported on fairly widely but nothing was ever really done about it.