The Wrath

Trebor, you are taking things said out of context, nitpicking every word I use while ignoring the obvious meaning in what I've said, and (most annoyingly of all) asking me to elaborate on every statement that I make in the same manner of a child asking why the sky is blue. You must be a lawyer, because few people will nitpick to that degree in normal conversation. It would take me at least an hour to answer your latest objections to my post and, frankly, I'm not willing to devote that amount of time to it. Instead, why don't you defend your view that Islam is a total state ideology by showing why moderate interpretations are objectively wrong and the UBLite interpretation is the "true" version of Islam? Call Islam what you will: umbrella ideology, religion, philosophy, Albuquerque, etc. At least acknowledge that there exist many Muslim sects which do not interpret their **insert proper term here** as being totalitarian and aggressively militaristic. If you're willing to acknowledge that, then you're on very shaky ground to make any blanket statements about whether Islam is a peaceful or warlike **insert proper term here.**

Sorry it took so long to respond. Having said that, I don't think what I'm saying is that complicated. You said Islam was a total state ideology. I disputed that by pointing out that not all people who believe in Islam think it needs to rule every facet of civil life. What are the ideas that unite all Muslims, regardless of differing interpretations? I'm no Islamic scholar, but I would start with the belief that "there is no god but God and Mohammad is his prophet." As with Christianity, if you get much more specific than that, people will start to disagree. Whatever these unifying ideas are, the idea that Islam should control the government and every facet of civil life isn't one of them.

No, for the simple reason that it is impossible to simultaneously follow everything set down in the Quran, without engaging in linguistic acrobatics of the sort that religious apologists are known for. And I didn't mean that to be scare quotes. I meant it to emphasize that I don't think there can be any such thing as the "true" version of a contradictory doctrine. If I write a holy book that says "The only way to get into heaven is to be a complete pacifist" and then later say "The only way to get into heaven is to kill all the infidels," there's no way to find an authoritative interpretation of the proper way to get into heaven. That's obviously a lot more black-and-white than a text like the Quran, but I think it illustrates my point. This is all pretty accurate to what I'm saying. I don't think Islam can be called "an ideology," given the vast disagreement by people who call themselves Muslims. There are certain unifying ideas that are present among all people who call themselves Muslims, but the way these ideas impact their daily lives and are put into practice (or not) in the government varies widely. I don't have an opinion on the doctrine of abbrogation. Like other Islamic doctrines, there are suras that can be used to support or refute the idea that God abbrogates previous "revelations." Short answer: Not just no, but hell no. Long answer: I think that religion served a useful purpose in the distant past and, in its most primitive stages, was even a noble attempt by our species to look for answers in an otherwise incomprehensible world. But somewhere around the transition from loosely-bound chiefdoms into more centralized city states, I think it lost its utility and became a parasite on the back of civilization that we have still not managed to throw off. Some religions are more of a plague than others. At present, Islam is undoubtedly the gravest threat (at least, among religions) to humanity as a whole--not just because of the wars that are fought in its name, but because it is keeping large swaths of the earth mired in economic squalor.

Here is what you said: The point that I and others are making is that neither the violent extremists nor the tolerant, peace-loving members of any religion are fully consistent. And whether one interpretation or the other is considered "more consistent" or "the true interpretation" seems to be primarily a function of the particular period of history. Right now, we might be tempted to say that violent Muslims and pacifistic Christians are more consistently following their respective faiths, but that is a function only of the predominant (debatable) viewpoints among those religions today, rather than some objective, fail-safe interpretation of the religious texts.

Trebor, the fact that you can find people espousing these opinions does not support your argument, as no one denies they exist. What I am saying is that it is useless to use the monolithic grouping "Islam" as the proper name for violent ideologies, because there are other ideologies under that same heading that are peaceful. I am also saying that you (and everyone else) are incapable of reconciling Islam into a single ideology, because its scriptures can be used to justify a number of mutually exclusive ideas.

You are citing opinions. For every cleric you can find that holds this view, I can find one that disagrees.

According to some interpretations, yes. This is ibn Warraq's view. There are many Muslim clerics, however, who would disagree. Neither you nor I are in a position to call them wrong. Once again, we are left with the conclusion that Islam is as Islam does, according to the interpretation of each person practicing it.

A well-reasoned argument that uses the original sources and offers reasonable counterpoints to alternative interpretations of said sources that have prevailed at different periods of history--and still prevail in some places today. Well, hold on a second. I never said Islam is a religion of piece. That's western liberal hogwash. I just reject the notion that you can say "Islam," as such, is a violent ideology--because the word "Islam" does not name a single ideology but, rather, dozens of competing and mutually-exclusive ideologies that all claim to be the correct interpretation of the religion revealed by Muhammad. As far as I'm concerned, bin Laden and my former boss from Turkey are both Muslims. My boss was very observant and followed all the strictures that he thought his religion placed on his own actions, but he was one of the nicest people I have known in many years and had no ill-will towards non-Muslims. Calling someone a Muslim tells me nothing about what they think is the proper role of religion in public life. Even many Muslims in the Middle East drink alcohol and visit prostitutes. Had we been having this conversation 1000 years ago, you might be telling me that Christianity is inherently impossible to separate from the state, whereas Islam has a streak of tolerance and relative progressivism.

I realize I am late to this discussion but, Trebor, the burden of proof is on you in this one. If you want to claim that bin Laden and his ilk were following the "true" version of Islam, it's up to you to use the Quran and various other Islamic sources to show why. Softwarnerd's point is not one that is easily ignored. It is impossible to be a fully consistent Christian, because faithfully following (or at least believing in) parts of the Christian religion necessarily mean that you ignore or fail to follow others. The same is true of Islam. If you choose to follow the violent parts of the Quran, you are ignoring other parts that preach peace. When bin Laden points to "slay them wherever ye find them," a whirling Dervish in Turkey might point to "there is no compulsion in religion." There is a theory, advocated by famed anti-Islamic activist ibn Warraq, that the violence of the different parts of the Quran depend on whether Muhammad was in Mecca or Medina when they were "revealed" to him. In Mecca, where he did not have much of a following and was at the mercy of the authorities, the suras are largely peaceful. In Medina, where he developed a following, they are more violent. I admit to not having studied this matter in detail myself, but I suspect you haven't either. The statement "Islam is a total state religion" is true, only insofar as it has been practiced as such in certain parts of the Islamic world in certain parts of its history. As it is with Christianity. In other times and other places, both religions have coexisted peacefully with other religions in a pluralistic society--as in modern Turkey. Even with the "Islamist" party in power, there are no government-sanctioned massacres or increased taxes against religious minorities. It's also worth noting that even with a large number of Muslims nominally supporting religious government, it is not practiced in most of the Middle East with anything approaching consistency. Islam unambiguously bans the consumption of alcohol and yet, to my knowledge, the only countries that completely ban it are (I think) Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya (for now), and Sudan.

Didn't you earlier argue that torture was immoral in all circumstances?

The significance is that the birther crowd won't let it go. It's probably not the original birth certificate anyway, but an official copy from the same hospital.

It helps him. To the extent that there were reasonable people within the birther movement, they will now go away. The more irrational ones will continue to claim that he was born in Kenya, insist that the document is a fake, and further alienate the Republican party from independent voters.

He wins them because "debate" is pretty much all he does. He's got practice, and--since he does virtually nothing else--he has plenty of time to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of his opponents' views and prepare canned responses to them. If that doesn't work, he hones his techniques for controlling the debate by using various distractions, to ensure his opponents waste time responding to non-sequiturs. Also, he is extremely good at presenting the more intellectual arguments for God. His presentation of the Teleological and Cosmological arguments, in particular, are flawless. Rebutting those arguments--skillfully presented--in a timed debate is not as easy as it sounds, and when his opponents have to use valuable time to rebut his juvenile, high school tactics (like the one about Jesus' resurrection), he virtually assures he will be the winner.

I don't really get the criticism of my post. I didn't betray any "premises." I was relaying my personal impression of people I know who are involved with the Tea Party--that they tend to be tin-foil hat conservative types who think the earth is 6000 years old and Obama is a Kenya-born Muslim.

What I'm saying is that I know a number of Tea Party-ish people who were excited about the AS movie coming out. Let's just say that I am not confident in their abilities to extract any deep meaning from the book that goes beyond "taxes are bad."

But to that, I would respond that the extra support and buyers of the book are not people who have seriously studied Objectivism, or even read enough to understand its basic tenets. Atlas Shrugged is being hailed--by some conservative bloggers--as the "Tea Party blockbuster." Given that the Tea Party is composed, to a large degree, of extreme religious conservatives who just happen to share our goal of decreasing government intervention in the economy, I wouldn't necessarily be excited about that. When people from that particular demographic (i.e. my parents) read Atlas Shrugged, the deepest point they glean from it is "taxes are bad." Not quite what Rand intended...

Ah, William Lane Craig's favorite argument that, for some reason, the people who debate him never try to debunk, despite the fact that it is laughably easy to do so. The only of those 5 claims that are indisputably true are 2 and 4. The rest are predicated on the existence of Jesus which, while probable, is far from certain. So, 1 by 1: 1.) Yeah, probably. So were many other people. 2.) And? How many Muslims/Hindus/Zoroastrians/etc. have been so convinced of their own religion that they died for it? 3.) Given that the only sources that describe the life of Christ, in detail, are four widely disparate gospels that were written by people decades after his supposed death, we can pretty safely discount this one. 4.) This is an indisputable historical fact. So what? See #2. 5.) Francis Collins (director of the Human Genome Project) was a skeptic who became a Christian after he saw a beautiful waterfall. Convinced? Neither am I. Also, see #2.

Here is something else he said: First of all, he is woefully misinformed if he thinks we are "leaving." That would have been an accurate statement in 2009. We have left. Setting up the kind of operation needed to *ahem* acquire an oil-field would essentially require that we reinvade Iraq, starting a whole new cycle of violence in the process (since the Iraqi people would never accept it), possibly having to depose the government (since the Iraqi government would never accept it), betraying the Kurds (since they control some of the largest oil fields), feeding Iran's influence in the region, and--worst-case scenario--prompting some kind of conflict that spills over into other regional countries. However, let's assume that we can safely and more-or-less peacefully take control of the oil fields with the full consent of the Iraqi government and people, using a handful of security contractors and petrol engineers. We're on pretty shaky moral ground, considering this argument boils down to "we conquered those mother-fuckers, and we're gonna take whatever we damn-well please." Sure, he qualifies it by saying we are "reimbursing" ourselves. But, reimbursing for what? Whatever your views on the morality of invading Iraq, it's not exactly like we were invited. If a man badly needs his house repainted and you decide to do it for him while he's out of town, you don't then demand that he pay you for the job. What he's recommending is theft, and no amount of protestations to the contrary will make any reasonable person see it as payment for services rendered.

No, that is not what I'm claiming. I suspect that the disparity between critic reviews and audience reviews is due (at least in part) to the fact that most people who go out of their way to see it are going to be people who are either familiar with Rand's writings or who know enough to know that she believed in small government and, therefore, rate the movie highly after having heard 2 hours of pro-small government dialogue. Not exactly the same as the "Silent Hill fanboy" phenomenon, but similar. Having said that...I haven't seen the movie, and don't plan to, so I could be way off-base. I've heard enough bad reviews from Objectivists and other people sympathetic to Rand's philosophy (as well as mainstream critics) to make me not want to see it. On the flipside, the positive reviews that I've seen focus almost entirely on the presentation of the philosophy, and not about the technical aspects of the movie itself. As Grames said, a true critic will review the movie as a stand-alone work of art, not by how much he agrees with it or how true it is to Rand's philosophy. If I start to see some reviews that praise the movie's artistic value and technical competency, I might rethink whether I want to see it.

I think a better comparison would be Silent Hill, which got 29% from critics and 65% from general audience. Although the difference is not as much as Transformers 2, it was an esoteric movie that would be completely incomprehensible to someone who hasn't played the video game. But if enough fanboys go see the movie and give it rave reviews, it will get high rating among general audiences. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/silent_hill/

It's obviously more complicated than that. He does it because there are--in this crowd of mostly peaceful protestors--a few snipers, and he then goes on trial (I won't spoil it by telling how it ends). The movie clearly intends for the viewer to sympathize with his decision. Now, regardless of the actual morality of his actions (and I would argue he was in his rights to fire on the crowd), the point is that a committed leftist would not see it that way. A true leftist would unequivocally condemn his actions and consider it the moral equivalent to firing on a crowd composed entirely of peaceful protestors. Ebert's review doesn't do that, though it does seem to express some reservations. Regardless of that, he also praises the movie for its strengths as a courtroom thriller.

I agree that Ebert often has a political slant to his reviews, but I also think he generally does a good job about not letting that impact how he sees the artistic value. I'll use Rules of Engagement as an example. He gives it a lukewarm review, praising its value as a well-done trial movie, though questioning its sense of war-time morality. If he were a committed far-leftist who panned every movie with a conservative slant, then he would have done the same here...considering the protagonist ordered his troops to mow down a crowd of Yemeni civilians.

The difference in opinions is quite amazing. Some people are calling it spectacular, while others are panning it. PJ O'Rourke panned it, but Michael Shermer liked it. I respect the opinions of both men. The only thing I can think is that the people who like it are focusing mostly on the philosophy, while the people who dislike it are focusing on the production values.

Let's see: 1.) Wants to reinvade Iraq for the self-confessed aggressive purpose of taking its oil. 2.) Wants to slap China with a 25% tariff. 3.) Buys into the tin-foil hat nonsense about Obama being born in Kenya. These right here are reason enough to be scared shitless of someone like this ever obtaining high office. It's difficult to see how someone this irrational, reactionary, and completely undiplomatic could have become such a successful businessman. Supposedly, he's threatening to run as an independent if he doesn't get the Republican nomination. If he does, you can pretty much be assured that Obama gets another term.

Uhh...primary difference, of course, being that the American Revolution was an actual historical event that had some events inherently fitted to expression in cinematic form. I take Atlas Shrugged for what it is...a novel in which the characters espouse a philosophy that I find admirable. I see no way to make that into an interesting movie.