Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I did jail time in the Sixties for a peaceful sit-in against the Vietnam War. So (as with many things) my understanding of the issues involved in what may be termed “civil disobedience” is eminently practical as well as theoretical. I was very disturbed by a recent column in the New York Times by Kirk Johnson entitled “Do Motives Matter?” It discussed the DeChristopher case. I reproduce it in its entirety and discuss it below.
Do Motives Matter? The DeChristopher Verdict
Tim DeChristopher hugged supporters as he left a courthouse in Salt Lake City after his conviction. Associated Press Photo
The American legal system tends to pay obsessive attention to a person’s motives and mental state. A hate crime, for example, only becomes a hate crime at all with motive. Premeditated offenses often get harsher treatment than impulsive acts of rage or passion. The capacity to understand right and wrong is a fundamental threshold of competency in a courtroom.
OK, let’s stop right there. Part of that is simply untrue. In addition, he is conflating motive, premeditation, mental competence, and intent.
The American legal system pays almost no attention to motive. The only crime I can think of in which a person’s motives make a difference is a “hate crime”. This is a recent addition to the law. But if you murder someone, or steal their wallet, your motive is meaningless. You might have stolen to impress your girlfriend. You might need the money to feed your kids. Doesn’t matter, the jury will never hear about your motive. The only question the jury ever considers is “did you do it”, not “why did you do it”.
While premeditation and mental competence and intent are certainly issues to which the law pays “obsessive attention”, they have nothing to do with motive. All they are doing in his essay is confusing the issue. In general the person’s motive for doing something whether a person had noble reasons for committing a crime is legally immaterial to the jury. If motive enters into the record at all, it is only and solely in the sentencing phase, after the person has been found guilty and the jury sent home. Thus the judge acted correctly in doing what Kirk Johnson describes in mildly accusatory accusatory undertones as:
But in the federal trial of Tim DeChristopher, who was convicted on Thursday in Salt Lake City on two felony charges for trying to derail an auction oil and gas leases in southern Utah in late 2008, discussion of motive – at least so far as the jury got to hear – was almost entirely stripped away.
Judge Dee Benson told the lawyers that the case would not be about why Mr. DeChristopher did what he did, but only whether he did it. Federal energy policies and concern about climate change, which were in fact the core drivers of Mr. DeChristopher’s actions, as he has said in many interviews, would not be put on trial, Judge Benson ruled.
And he properly ruled so. DeChristopher’s motives are not relevant to the jury’s deliberations.
Does it matter? In covering the case for The New York Times, I found myself pondering a pretty deep question: In assessing offenses driven by environmental concerns, is an understanding of the “why” crucial to the truth? Or is it a huge distraction because of the politics and complexity and controversy that swirl around the subject?
Is his motive “crucial to the truth” or a “huge distraction”? I would say neither. I would say that an understanding of his motive in the context of what is called “noble cause corruption” is useful in understanding the current sorry state of climate science. In either case his motive does not matter to the law, nor should it.
Would the jury have assessed things differently if the defendant’s deeper psychological portrait had emerged – specifically his belief that risks to the planet and the future are so dire and urgent that rules must be broken?
Or is the “rule of law,” as an assistant United States attorney, John W. Huber, put in it his closing argument, crucial to civil society — the linchpin of protecting everything we have, including and perhaps especially the environment?
I have no sympathy with this argument at all. Why on earth should I care about Mr. DeChristopher’s “deeper psychological portrait”? I don’t generally turn over rocks if I fear that there are strange things under them … I’m not interested in what lies under Mr. DeChristopher’s actions. I have enough problems with the creatures that live under my own skullcap, I have no interest in the unknown denizens of Mr. DeChristopher’s cranium.
Certainly, Mr. DeChristopher, a 29-year-old economics graduate, is no eco-terrorist. This was not an Earth Liberation Front firebombing; the closest he got to violence was raising his bidding paddle at the auction to buy land leases with money he didn’t have. But there was also little doubt, as he had also conceded in interviews, that he broke the law by signing federal forms while posing as a legitimate energy buyer, and then by bidding successfully for upward of $1.8 million in leases from the federal Bureau of Land Management.
Again, I’m not clear what the relevance of this is. He is not an eco-terrorist. He is also not a kidnapper or a child molester … so what? What does that have to do with his case? Is he saying we should have sympathy for him because he is a “white collar criminal”? Because I generally have less sympathy for that breed of crook, not more. I’ll take an honest bank robber over a bank accountant who steals the same amount of money, any time.
In a statement after the verdict, the United States attorney for Utah, Carlie Christensen, addressed part of this debate, one that will no doubt continue in Mr. DeChristopher’s probable appeal. “Whether the B.L.M. was correct in its decision to offer these parcels for oil and gas lease sales was not the question which this jury was asked to resolve,” Ms. Christensen said.
Nor should they be asked to resolve it. It is not a question for the jury.
Look, I have no problem with Mr. DeChristopher’s actions. As I mentioned, I did the same myself, and I did time for it. As we said then, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. However, I never heard the New York Times opining that the judge should have considered my motives in deciding my guilt or innocence. It didn’t matter. I was guilty. As is DeChristopher.
What I have a problem with is when this kind of thinking slops over into the scientific arena. You see, if a scientist thinks it is ethical to break the laws of civil society in the name of saving the planet, I have absolutely no confidence that the same man will not break the laws of honest, transparent, ethical science in the name of saving the planet. As we have seen, sadly, this more than a thoretical threat.
When this occurs in science, it is called “noble cause corruption”. It occurs when a scientist thinks that their cause (saving the world from Thermageddon) is so important and so noble that it transcends plebeian concerns. Their cause is much more critical and vital and important than, you know, mundane boring things like transparency, and scientific integrity, and archiving data that may not agree with your hypothesis, and revealing adverse results. For scientists like that, those are petty scientific concerns, things that only apply to people who are not engaged on a mission from Gaia.
This noble cause corruption, amply personified by Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Gene Wahl, Caspar Amman, Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, Stephen Schneider, Lonnie Thompson, and far too many other leading lights of AGW orthodoxy, has been the root cause of the mistrust of the public in climate science.
And reasonably so. When the public sees top-notch, world-renowned climate scientists lying and cheating and breaking the rules and stuffing the peer-review panels and subverting the IPCC, what do you think will happen to the reputation of the field?
Judith Curry and others keep presenting this as a communications problem. It is not. The AGW folks think the problem is that they’re not getting the word out. So they’ve formed some kind of Guerrilla AGW Killer Rapid Response Ninja Suicide Death Commando Team to answer questions, at least I think that’s the name … guys, lack of AGW scientific opinion is not a problem as far as I can see, quite the opposite. We’ve heard your scientific claims of upcoming catastrophe proclaimed at full volume over and over. And over. And over. The problem is not that your message is not getting across. We hear it. It’s crystal clear, no problem with either the medium or the message. RST is five by five, as the ham radio operators have it.
But most folks simply don’t believe anything you say. You’ve lied to everyone before, you conned us in the past, people are determined it won’t happen again.
The problem is that a large number of the top names in the field have been shown to be, well, liars, cheats, and thieves. They were working hard, in secret, using deplorable, unethical, and likely illegal tactics to advance their noble cause and to protect their secrets and their data and methods.
Now, if that were all, it would be bad. But it is worse than that. If, when all that was revealed, the rest of the honest, decent climate scientists had stood up and pointed and said “For Shame!”, the breach in trust could have been repaired. If the miscreants were identified and disowned by the majority of climate scientists, there would have been problems, but not huge problems.
But that’s not what happened. When the Climategate rock was rolled over, and the UEA nest of scorpions was revealed and they started running from the sunlight, with few and notable exceptions the good, decent, honest climate scientists suddenly found something else really fascinating to talk about. About how it was just boys being boys. About how it was just scientists talking trash about each other in private. About how Climategate meant nothing. About how the use of “hacked” emails was unethical. The overwhelming majority of the good honest decent AGW supporters talked volubly about everything under the sun … everything except the putrid scientific rot Climategate revealed within the top ranks. Nor did they say a peep about a succession of ludicrous whitewash investigations apparently led by Inspector Clouseau of “Pink Panther” fame … silence and closing the ranks was the order of the day.
So as a result much of the general public in the US at least believes that all climate scientists are crooks. They’re not. They’re mostly just reasonable, curious scientists who tragically were unwilling to speak up for scientific honesty and integrity when history called on them to do so. And as the saying goes, for scorpions to succeed, all that is necessary is for good climate scientists to do nothing.
After all of that, anyone who thinks that what we have is a communications problem, or that it can be solved by better scientific explanations, or that it can be fixed by reframing the discussion, is seriously deluding themselves. Someday, good science will eventually win out. Not communication. Not reframing. Good science.
But until then, I can assure you that if a climate scientist says it’s raining outside, any reasonable person will surreptitiously glance out the window …
w.
[Update] There is an outstanding comment below:
Turn this around when thinking about the “profit motive” such that the “profit motive” were a valid legal defense. A really scary thought, that one is.
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Smoking Frog says:
March 14, 2011 at 2:49 am
johanna,
The legal defense of self-defense is an example of what the law calls exculpatory defense, or defense of necessity. To say that it depends on motive is to entertain the absurdity of a person faced with the necessity of defending himself but having some other motive for the violence that he commits, such that it matters to his guilt or innocence. Suppose he cares nothing at all for defending himself; he is a radical pacifist. In that case, you may say, he lacked the motive and therefore lacked the “necessity”; actually he wants to reduce the number of Republicans, and the person who attacked him was a Republican. So we’re talking about a radical pacifist who seizes the opportunity to kill someone in circumstances in which anyone else would have the motive of self-defense. How crazy is that? The fact is that he acted so as to defend himself.
[snip]
You’re telling me that the motive is implied by the facts “trying to kill you…you respond by killing them.” That gets rid of the question of motive. If everyone who acts so as to defend himself has the motive of defending himself, motive is irrelevant. It is only relevant if some people who act so as to defend themselves lack the motive of defending themselves – but those would be crazy people. Whether the defendant acted in self-defense is a question of fact, not motive. I said it before, and I’ll say it again: You don’t understand the issue.
Prior to this message, I only offered one example, so there is no “some of your examples.”
Everyone knows what ‘not proven’ means. It also helps to avoid hung juries.
I doubt that it helps to avoid hung juries. According to Wikipedia, Scottish juries render verdicts by simple majority, there are 15 jurors, and anything less than 8 “guilty” votes is an acquittal.
———————————————————
What a strange post. ‘Motive’ is what it is – the thing that moves someone to do something. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is part of a subset called ‘exculpatory’. As for the stuff about pacifists and Republicans, I read it a few times, and still do not know what it means. And, I am baffled by your statement that where motive is reasonable and understandable (such as defending your life), it no longer exists. Que?
You are correct in picking me up on the use of the term ‘hung jury’. I apologise for that. My point was that it gives jurors who are not comfortable with either a conviction, or an acquittal, a third option. In a group of 15, that provides a worthwhile alternative in cases where most members are unconvinced by the cases of both the prosecution and the defence.
johanna, read this article about the murder of the Israeli family the other day. Mother, father, and three children, including a baby. It includes priceless examples of Muslin deception: quotes from one press release for the West, in which the victims are referred to as victims, and another from the same organization for fellow Muslims, in which the victims are nastily referred to Zionist usurpers. The letters from Muslims praising the murders are also instructive.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/03/028596.php
Quoting a dictionary means nothing. Actions speak louder than words, and in this case, one set of words speaks far louder than another. I don’t know of religionofpeace.com, which I don’t go to, is a hate site, but I think you’re living in LaLa Land if you refuse to face reality.
And talk about cherry-picking. Your quote from the Koran is hilarious. Go buy a Koran and read the whole thing, and then come back here to tell us how wonderful and truthful Islam actually is. Remember the infamous “Satanic Verses?” And keep in mind, it wasn’t written three thousand years ago, either. The policies it advocates are in effect in the most of the Middle East today, where people are still stoned to death, where homosexuals are burned alive, and were women and animals are treated like dirt.
Thanks, Willis.
One need is for better law. “Hate crime” is an example of going in the wrong direction, it is legislation by concretes instead of principles, thus does not protect individuals and will always be behind the creativity of psychologically troubled persons.
Another is better voters (there’s an ambitious goal? ;-). Voters elect the politicians who appoint judges who ignore the constitution, which was the problem with racial discrimination in the SE US (look at, for example, the case of a legal challenge to Louisiana law by a young man, financed by a transit railway company who did not want to segregate but were forced to by local law). Somehow the Declaration of Indpendence’s “self evident” wasn’t in the minds of voters who elected the dishonest control-minded politicians.
(Note that opposition to the Vietnam war had three elements that were usually confused together:
– conscription (the military draft), which is morally wrong
– whether or not the mission was worth the effort (the Communists were of course wrong, but there is not a duty to fight every case)
– motives of the objectors (were they resisting the draft or promoting Marxism?).
In both “hate crime” laws and climate alarmism we are dealing with collectivism rather than individuals, but worse we are dealing with bad thinking.
Hate comes from many reasons – an individual may hate a parent for some reason (whether valid or not), Marxists hate business people (because they believe in fixed pie economics and do not value the mind), environmentalists hate consumers (because they believe in fixed pie economics and they believe that humans are not capable of acting for good, or worse they hate humans intrinsically). Typical “hate crime” law covers only the tribal type of collectivism – attacking someone because of a characteristic or belief of the attacked individual that is the same as a number of other people (skin colour or religion (such as the attack on a Jewish centre in Seattle by a Muslim person)). But does “hate crime” cover the vicious attack on a young man in Esquimalt BC because he had a red jacket on – he was dressed up for a date, some individuals assumed he was a member of a rival gang of young thugs so beat him up severely? What about Kick A Ginger day (which some idiot invented and some mindless students acted on)? What about gratuitous attacks that are common today – no motive toward the attacker per se, just choice of victim on opportunity? How does motive matter to the victim, who is maimed or dead? A problem with collectivist approach to law is that it leaves individuals without protection of the law.
Of course in climate alarmism we are seeing “circling of the wagons”, protecting the dishonest “climate scientists” in order to somehow save the collective thus their mission. (Note the frequent use of “consensus” as a reason people should believe alarmists. Note the attempt to redefine the term “scientist” to exclude their critics. Both tactics come from the bad philosophy underlying their movement, one founded in a negative view of humans.)
And those who oppose climate alarmism aren’t always decent people. One of them, a retired climate scientist, has links to racist articles on his web site. Obviously I want nothing to do with him.
As for “civil disobedience”, which is often not very civil in nature, note the case of a prominent alarmist scientist being arrested for protesting against a coal mine.
But beware that you may be guilty of “thought crime”: http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/law/6319-court-endorses-thought-crime.html
I am in no way an apologist for Islam or any other religion, as I keep saying to people with fingers in their ears saying ‘la-la-la.’
The fact that people use religion as an excuse for atrocities is nothing new – for a Western example that may be more understandable, look at the history of the IRA. Men, women, children, killed and maimed in the name of a perverted version of Christianity. It is always appalling and deplorable when that happens. Are you suggesting that the IRA bombers were driven by the ideology of Christianity?
My (Muslim) local restauranteurs phoned me the other day because they had inadvertently overcharged me by $10. I guess they must have missed the part in Muslim belief systems which says that dishonesty is a core value.
johanna said: What a strange post. ‘Motive’ is what it is – the thing that moves someone to do something. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is part of a subset called ‘exculpatory’. As for the stuff about pacifists and Republicans, I read it a few times, and still do not know what it means. And, I am baffled by your statement that where motive is reasonable and understandable (such as defending your life), it no longer exists. Que?
Nothing strange about it. I’ll try to make it as simple as possible:
Self-defense is a matter of what the person did in what circumstances, not a matter of his motive for doing it. Only a crazy person, or perhaps not even a crazy person, would defend himself without having the motive of self-defense. The radical pacifist who defends himself without having a motive of doing so, but with having another motive (to get rid of Republicans), illustrates this. He defended himself regardless of his motive.
My (Muslim) local restauranteurs phoned me the other day because they had inadvertently overcharged me by $10. I guess they must have missed the part in Muslim belief systems which says that dishonesty is a core value.
Not that it’s a core value, but that it is permissable if it allows you to accomplish a permissable and praiseworthy thing. Stealing isn’t praiseworthy. There is no noble means attained by the sin.
There are numerous quotes where Mohammad basically attests that the ends justify the means. That’s a rather unique feature in a religion. In many respects Mohammad is nearer Sun Tzu than Jesus. That’s only an insult if a person chooses to take it that way.
johanna says:
“Are you suggesting that the IRA bombers were driven by the ideology of Christianity?”
No, I never said anything remotely like that. How you’ve managed to conflate the behavior of Stone Age religionists with the Irish political situation is beyond me. The Koran demands stonings, beheadings, and murders of all kinds, which many Muslims obediently engage in; the New Testament does not. Mohamed butchered hundreds and hundreds of innocent people; the Jesus of the Christian myth never killed anyone. Mohamed married and had sex with a little girl. Jesus didn’t.
I’m not a Christian, but I do know the difference between Christianity and Islam, and if you don’t, that’s your fault. But, since you don’t, you really should not be expounding on the imagined innocence of Islam or trying to pick a fight in its defense. You’ve completely ignored the fact that every Muslim country is barbaric by Western standards, and not one of them has a system of human rights remotely equivalent to ours. As a female, you would no rights in most Muslim countries, but if that’s okay with you, go for it.
Islam seeks world domination and the installation of a global theocracy. In the year 2011. Now. Christianity does not; Judaism does not; Buddhism does not; Hinduism does not; Bon does not.
Muslims routinely murder Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Jews. They destroy Buddhist temples, bomb churches and synagogues, and blow up all kinds of buildings for Allah’s sake. They do this somewhere almost every day. They strap bombs on their own little children, including retarded children, and send them into Jewish neighborhoods to become martyrs. Can you name any other religionists who do these things?
And don’t try to accuse me of hate speech. Facts are not hateful, though they may be hideous. I’ve never set out to hurt anyone in my life. But, you’ve made a point of defending Islam (even though, by your own admission, you don’t know anything about it), and of calling a critical Web site a hate site. Has it occurred to you that perhaps the people running that site know infinitely more about the subject than you? That perhaps they’ve had bad personal experiences that have shaped their views?
johanna says:
March 14, 2011 at 11:04 am
If you have a better page, please suggest it. I only read as far as the Koran quotes, so sue me. However, Islam does in fact allow the faithful to lie. Mohammed broke treaties with “unbelievers” using the loophole. So I fear that although you’re right about that site (very anti-Islam), you’re wrong about lying and Islam.
Because the Islamic holy books clearly say it’s ok to lie to unbelievers, that’s you and me. And as the comment that started this discussion said, it’s the only major religion I know of that says that it is OK to do that, to lie to people outside the religion.
w.
But, Willis, the rest of the religions allow us to be forgiven for our lies next Sunday with little more than a contritely said, “Sorry, my bad” (not that I’m complaining about that). That makes for a bit of parity here. We are forbidden but apparently serve little time for our foibles. While Islam allows lying under certain circumstances, you’ld better get those circumstances right or face getting your lying tongue cut out of your mouth. There had been times, as a mother of three teens, I was ready to be radicalized.
George M says:
March 13, 2011 at 1:18 pm
If there’s even a smidgeon of political justice about, his party will be held to account for generations with having, with malice aforethought, foisted Obama on the country.
Pamela Gray says:
March 15, 2011 at 5:15 am
Thanks, Pamela. Very funny, and nicely put.
I don’t have much use for any religion. But that doesn’t mean I think they’re all equal or even similar. Islam is not Christianity with funny headgear by any means.
For me, the distinction is that Hinduism seems like a naturalistic farmer’s religion, full of elephants and monkeys and the like. Christianity is a religion that preaches love as the response to aggression, although it often practices the opposite. Buddhism preaches a message of letting go of clinging, and the Eight-Fold Path. All are different, and appeal to different kinds of people.
Islam is a warrior’s religion. If I were to design a religion for teenage boys, it would be Islam. It contains an ingenious rule, one that led to huge Islamic expansion.
Before the Koran, when you conquered somebody, you killed them, or not, whatever. But the Koran says you have to offer the conquered people the chance to convert to Islam. If you didn’t convert, you had to pay taxes … which for dirt-poor people could be ruinous. Civilized, right?
So when the Islamic homies rolled into town, and a young guy was offered a chance to either convert to Islam and have a chance to go out raiding with them and get money and food and women and slaves, or stay at home and pay taxes, it wasn’t too tough a choice. As a result, the armies of Islam swelled, and the religion rolled out of the mideast and spread, in large part by the sword, around the planet. It’s brilliant, it’s got a heaven with 72 virgins for those men that make great sacrifices … like I said, it’s designed for teenage boys.
The Koran is chock full of rules about how to wage war, and what you can do in war, and how to dispose of the war booty and the slaves … not the kind of stuff you find in other religions. Oh, other religions tell of ancient wars, but the Koran was kind of the Geneva Convention of its time.
In fact, it was ahead of its time, in that the Islamic strictures on war were at least codified, and they generally were more civilized than those of many of the surrounding cultures of the time. Unfortunately, what was outrageously avant-garde in the seventh century doesn’t seem that advanced here in the twenty-first century …
The problem is that the Koran, and Mohammed, and Islam, are all split in two. When Mohammed was young and had no power and was just another poor guy preaching on the street corner, the revelations of Allah in the Koran were all about being friends with those around you, about peace, about solving things without violence. Once he had moved up in life, to being the leader of a bunch of guys with swords who raided neighboring villages, Allah’s revelations became all about wars and violence and stuff like cutting people’s hands off if they dare to leave the religion and speak against it.
It makes sense, because leaving a religion is no big deal, there’s no need to punish anyone for that. But leaving what had become a raiding army of Allah and the speaking against it was betrayal and desertion in the face of the enemy and even worse, joining the enemy in opposing Islam. That deserves the harshest punishment (specified as cutting off a hand and a foot on opposite sides of the body).
It is also the reason for the verses about lying. When everything was peace and love, there was no need for verses about lying. But when you are making rules governing the lives of men in an army, deception of the enemy is sometimes a requirement. Which is the subject of a number of the exceptions allowing lying.
So while it is true that Islam is the Religion of Peace™, it is also just as strongly the Religion of War™. Which is why the lovely little old Lebanese or Persian or Indonesian lady down the street on the one hand, and Osama Bin Laden on the other hand, both believe they are correctly following the Koran … because they both are correctly following the Koran. It’s just that the Koran is split, schizophrenic, half love and half hatred, half peace and half war.
At some point, I have to assume some really charismatic Islamic leader will arise who will say “Dear friends, burying women up to the neck and stoning them to death is soooo seventh century, let’s get rid of the Satanic Verses that have crept into the Koran.” Last one to seriously try that was Baha’ullah, he was not well received and his followers are still persecuted by Shiite Muslims …
I just hope it’s soon. Events in Egypt and elsewhere give me hope that the Islamic youth are being infected with the virus of independent thought. But then I note that slightly less than half the people in Indonesia think stoning is the proper punishment for adultery, and that’s a moderate Islamic nation. Like I said, schizophrenic.
w.
‘How you’ve managed to conflate the behavior of Stone Age religionists with the Irish political situation is beyond me. The Koran demands stonings, beheadings, and murders of all kinds, which many Muslims obediently engage in; the New Testament does not.’
I didn’t mention the Bible at all – but since you raise it, the Old Testament is full of blood curdling stuff about smiting one’s enemies. I notice that you confine your remarks to the New Testament. Does that mean that you only subscribe to the bits of the Bible that you agree with?
Willis, asking me to put up an alternative to a hate site is exactly the kind of tactics you deplore elsewhere. It’s a hate site. It’s a load of bull. Why do I have to put up an alternative to ‘prove’ that – like why do people in the climate change debate have to put up some sort of alternative to prove a null hypothesis?
More broadly, suggesting that Islam (and therefore all its members and associates) is based on deception is uncomfortably like the old rag that said that Communism (and therefore all its members and associates) is based on deception. The notion that hundreds of millions of people all got together and agreed that systematic lying was the way forward for the world is just ludicrous. Russia and Eastern Europe are currently undergoing a huge renaissance of Christian religious observance, despite nearly 100 years of repression. I guess they were ‘commies’ that didn’t get the message. Then, there were lots of people who didn’t care about politics, or religion, and just went along to get along. No sign that they fell for the ‘lying’ ideology either. The apparatchiks lied like they do in every political system.
The ‘pure’ Communist ideology did not condone dishonesty in ordinary human relations. The ‘pure’ Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish or any other religion of note’s beliefs, do not either. It’s a pragmatic thing – people cannot get along if there is not a basis of trust.
If you think that ordinary Muslims go about life uniquely thinking that they have a free pass to lie to infidels – spend a few days in Vegas, and find out what lying to suckers is all about. Then, go to Washington, and discover the nature of truth.
If Christians took the Old Testament literally, your comments about aggressive, warrior behaviour, would be at least as applicable. Fortunately, the vast majority of Christians and Muslims, and members of other religions, are not running around lying because of their faith, or declaring war on other faiths.
You bailed me up for quotes to prove that Islam does not condone lying, and I provided them. Now you say that their holy books provide ample evidence of warlike sentiments. OK, provide them – but I will be able to provide plenty of quotes involving smiting and such from the Old Testament. What will that prove?
Suggest you have a quick look at the history of the Crusades before and if you post again on this topic. There is no patent on stupidity and atrocities committed in the name of religion.
While I am here, for the PP who raised the issue of women’s rights – just how long ago was it accepted that a married woman could be raped by her husband in your jurisdiction? Stone Age times?
Johanna, thanks as always for your comments.
The difference, as I said before, is in the holy books. Islam is a warrior’s religion. For example, there are entire suras about the proper rules regulating warfare. Take, for example, Sura 8 entitled “Spoils of War.” This is all about how to divide up war booty, and reads like an army manual. See also e.g. Sura 59:7 et seq. I see nothing corresponding to those in, for example, the New Testament.
Yes, the Old Testament contains lots of smiting, but those are descriptions, not prescriptions of things that the devout follower must do. The Koran, on the other hand, contains prescriptions that true Muslims do things like smite off people’s hands for stealing … I don’t recall Jesus advocating that kind of thing, but I might have missed it.
Yes, the followers of both religions do violent things, no doubt. But Christ didn’t lead groups of men out to kill his neighbors. Mohammed did. The New Testament condemns stonings, the Koran requires stonings. Different people, different styles, different religions. I’m not sure why this is so hard for you to understand. As I said before, Islam is not Christianity with funny headgear. It is a religion founded by a desert warrior, which is very different in root and branch from a religion founded by a man who advocated loving your enemies … you ignore that distinction at your peril.
Note I’m not saying Islam is bad. It is schizophrenic, which is a very different thing. Those that follow the good half of Islam are generally decent folks, although apparently the transient sight of a woman’s thigh gives them the vapors, and an unclothed breast causes insanity among even the best of them …
But those that follow the bad half of Islam have been blowing each other up and killing each other and stoning women and chopping of hands and declaring jihad on infidels at a rate of knots for a while now. And they say they are doing it with the blessing of the Koran and Islam, and the really bad news is … they are right. The Koran does advocate and say that Muslims should do those things.
And although you are correct that Christians did lots of bad things in the past, when was the last time a young Methodist guy put a bomb under his load of watermelons, drove to the next village where they’re mostly Baptists, invited the women and kids to buy cheap watermelons, and blew himself and the women and kids to smithereens … and then had his actions applauded by the Methodist religious leaders?
Because it’s a pretty common occurrence between those Shiites and Sunnis who follow the dark side of Islam, they blow each other up and their religious leaders not only think it’s just fine, they urge them on to further atrocities. The story about the watermelons is an actual Shiite/Sunni occurrence a couple years ago … you asked me to show that Islam is warlike? You could start there.
Thanks,
w.
PS – Johanna, you say:
You misunderstand me entirely. That site was not my recommendation, it was that of another poster. I only read the quotations from the Koran, until you pointed it out I hadn’t scrolled down to see that the authors were no fans of Islam.
So, since you didn’t like the site, I said you might suggest another site that discussed those issues that was more to your liking. My exact quote was:
Asking you if you have a better page, Johanna, is not asking you for “an alternative to a hate site”. And I certainly didn’t say you have to ‘prove’ anything, why is that in quotes? That’s 100% fantasy. I agreed with you that the site was inadequate, but then I just used it to read the Koran quotes, so it didn’t matter to me.
So I don’t know who you think you are talking to, but it’s not me. I said nothing like what you are claiming.
Note I’m not saying Islam is bad. It is schizophrenic, which is a very different thing. Those that follow the good half of Islam are generally decent folks, although apparently the transient sight of a woman’s thigh gives them the vapors, and an unclothed breast causes insanity among even the best of them …
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I enjoy a good argument, as you obviously do, without malice. But, just as you talk about the ‘schizophrenic’ (which is inaccurate, but I assume you mean split or opposed) nature of Islam – surely the Old and New Testaments are the same thing?
I notice that you talk about Christ and the NT when differentiating Christianity from Islam, while carefully excluding the Old. For good reason, I suggest. Muscular Christianity has a long and strong tradition.
The cheap shot about women’s thighs would not have played so well in Christian America or England 100 years ago, where people pretty much believed the same thing. Indeed, most of the tut-tutting about the backwardness of Islam about women’s rights would not survive historical comparisons with Christianity for anyone who has a memory longer than that of a goldfish. Women, for a while, did not have souls. Later, they simply couldn’t own property, vote, or be raped in marriage.
Suggesting that the West benevolently handed women equal rights because of its moral superiority (or slaves their rights ditto) does make one wonder – if it is so self evident, how come it didn’t come with the package in the first place?
johanna says:
March 21, 2011 at 9:58 am
I don’t buy that at all. One hundred years ago Western women didn’t have to wear a head-to-toe burqas with only a small slit for the eyes. Why are you excusing that kind of action by trivializing it? I don’t buy the argument that “both were bad so that makes them equal”, that makes no sense.
Certainly, until recently women were legally subjugated even in the Western world. The democratic nature of our institutions plus the action of a lot of dedicated women has allowed the gradual passage of laws forbidding discrimination based on sex.
However, this has not happened in the Islamic world. And unfortunately, the laws in question are not from 1860 as in the Western world, they are from the year 660. So this has the same problem as the “well, Xtians stoned people to death too, and tortured them in the 1600s in Spain” type of argument.
So your point about women is true. Absolutely true. However, last I looked this is the 21st century. Everywhere in the modern world, people have given up burying women up to the neck and stoning them to death … except in Islam, where it is public sport. Public sport, mind you. Perhaps you see that as an unfortunate coincidence …
I say again, Islam is not just Christianity with funny headgear. I’m a shamanist, I think both Islam and Xtianity are superstitions … but they are very, very different superstitions. You conflate them at your own peril.
w.
PS – Oh, yeah, the Old and New Testament. I hold that Christ was pretty emphatic that he brought a new law. This was “Love God above everything, and love your neighbor as yourself”. His deal was there could never be stonings, since the person throwing the stones had to be without sin … a whole new plan.
That, to me, is the essence of Xtianity. Yes, it has been “twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools”, but that was the original message. Jesus threw out all the stuff about how you can’t wear clothes that are cotton/polyester blend (Leviticus 19:19, which seemed reasonable to me, polyester makes me sweat), and whether crayfish have cloven hooves, and the like. It replaced those laws with “Love your enemies, it drives them nuts.”
So that’s why I distinguish between Xtianity and the Old Testament. YMMV.