No a discarding of religion is what is required. It’s obvious that If any of the so called holly books were in fact written by gods then the reality would be that they would not be open to interpretation. Or are we saying that these gods are imperfect. The Arab world is homogeneous, just as the Christian. All the result of influence of religion.
This was my reading of the situation last night when the news aired. ISIS is losing ground in Iraq thanks the the airstrikes and the Kurdish army on the ground. This murder is an act of desperation.
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Since the ISIS folks are still pissed off about the reconquista, I doubt if there was much the USA could have done that would have mellowed them.
If the world ever did convert to one religion, it would only be a matter of time before the various different denominations started fighting.
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Well, if we could just get Michelle Obama to hold up a sign saying, “#PLEASE DON’T BEHEAD”, I’m sure that would make a big change for the better.
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Also, get arrested in the UK - via BBC
The Metropolitan Police warned that “viewing, downloading or disseminating” the video might be an offence under terrorism legislation.
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So now everything’s not just Obama’s fault, but Michelle’s too?
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According to me, any speaker who can so gruesomely behead another living person clearly has severe psychological issues (regardless of their nationality, religion, or army).
This is an irreparably broken person. One has to wonder how he got to where he is, particularly if he grew up in a society that closely resembles where the viewer grew up…
The only circumstance where I could fathom myself performing this calculated and controlled act would be against a person who purposefully and cruelly killed my loved ones and only in the immediate aftermath while insane from the grief and fury…
I think beheading is one of the more humane means of execution available to people who don’t have vast resources, such as huge pharma and criminal “justice” industries.
It’s also the traditional means of of death for an honored warrior enemy in many parts of the Middle East, including Afghanistan and India.
Historically, beheading has most often been a high-status death* - for example in medieval England and pre-revolutionary France only the nobility were decapitated, everyone else was hung by the neck or worse. Dr. Guillotin argued in Actes des Apôtres that beheading was the most humane form of execution, and that simple mechanisms could be created to make it even more so, and that it should be given to all those condemned as a matter of simple human decency.
And there’s considerable evidence to suggest that even a sloppy decapitation is a lot better than “modern” methods we take for granted - such as the electric chair, for example, or hanging.
Please understand I am not trying to defend the practice and I certainly am not claiming these clowns know how to kill a person with a minimum of suffering. I’m just explaining that our own traditional means of execution are equally as bad or even worse, and that when western news agencies gleefully exploit such events they are engaging in cultural propaganda - the USA tortured an innocent taxi driver to death in Bagram, and decapitation of invading soldiers is a relatively pedestrian atrocity if you aren’t purposely playing up the visceral horror of it for emotional impact. Note we are allowed to see these decapitations, but we are never allowed to see Rumsfeld’s videos of Abu Ghraib torture-rapes.
*there are some exceptions to this general trend - in Confucian China, dismembering of the body was far more culturally offensive than inflicting unnecessary suffering, and in Japan decapitation during a seppuku ritual was honorable, but without seppuku was dishonorable. Look up beheading in Wikipedia for more information.
Even if it turned out to be unitarian universalists, some smart ass would eventually say, “ah, but which universe?”
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I get your point that it might be swifter than lethal injection or the electric chair. I would even call the guillotine “humane”. But I’ve seen enough throat slitting/decapitation videos that I don’t think they do it for human reasons. I think it’s done for shock and able to present the head as a trophy.
“Humane” would be a bullet in the back of the head.
I don’t watch them, although I’m told the average Middle-eastern TV executioner is just as ludicrously incompetent as the average Medieval European headsman was.
Anyway I’m sure you are right that propaganda is the main reason for the beheadings. I also think the historical context informs the propaganda, though… by doing this they show their own people that they are treating captured enemies far more honorably than the USA treats captives, and at the same time they terrify and offend heavily propagandized American couch potatoes. Win-win for them, as compared to a less gory and more humane execution, and in the end the condemned man is still dead.
Sure, markacryan. All legitimate points. But remember that the original question isn’t about whether we should take responsibility for ourselves, or whether God is good. It’s whether simply excising the idea of gods will magically make us better people. I’m suggesting not – we’d still be stuck with the same brains that produced religion and all its evils in the first place (still arguing as if atheism is true).
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I certainly imagine a Muslim-led occupation of Texas, no matter how well intentioned, would have worked about as well as our big mis-adventure in Iraq.
It now looks like the real reason why he was murdered is that the US refused to pay his ransom. According to the New York Times:
[U]ntil recently, ISIS had a very different list of demands for Mr. Foley: They pressed the United States to provide a multimillion-dollar ransom for his release, according to a representative of the family and a former hostage held alongside him. The United States — unlike some European countries — refused to pay for Mr. Foley.
The issue of how to deal with ISIS, which like many Islamic extremist groups now routinely trades captives for large cash payments, is acute for the Obama administration because Mr. Foley was not the lone American in its custody. ISIS is threatening to kill at least three other Americans it holds if its demands remain unmet, The New York Times has confirmed through interviews with recently released prisoners, family members of the victims and with mediators attempting to win their freedom.
You might well be correct about all this, IM! But let’s not forget that public executions and torturing used to be public entertainment in Western society just a few hundred years ago. Go back a bit more and people were paying good money to see people mauled by animals in the arena.
So it looks like it is quite possible for a sick pathology to become so much a norm in a society that we can’t see it anymore. Which, of course, should make us wonder about ourselves…
Watching people die is way different than sawing their heads off yourself. Yes, morbid fascination is a quite normal human condition. I watched the video and I probably would have attended a public execution were I a commoner 300 years ago.
Conversely, I seem to recall learning that executioners in the past were often well-respected public figures but social pariahs. That an executioners family often had to marry the offspring of other executioners from different towns. Citation lacking, I know…
Either way, I’d argue that pulling a trigger or hatch or rope (for a guillotine) is far different than digging in with some elbow-grease to saw a off the head of a man you’ve held closely captive for months… tl;dr: again, the executioner is a fucked up broken person.
I guess. Just seems like a spectrum rather than a qualitative difference to me. I agree, however, that sawing off a head is a long way down the spectrum!
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Good for them. The world has had enough of trading the lives of other people for western lives at the rate of dozens to one. There’s no doubt that the millions of dollars would have caused much more than one death, contributed to more instability in the region and encouraged more similar demands.
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Well, it could have been any of the multitudes of the hashtag army. Cry Havoc, and loose the tweets of war!!
The image of Michelle holding up that sign about the kidnapped Nigerian girls, as if the murdering slime who took them would ever in a trillion years give a shit about her pathetic hashtag, just popped into my mind.
And have you noticed that those girls are still kidnapped?
If we decide up front that our country (whatever the home country of BB’ers happens to be) will take no decisive action against Boko Haram/Vladimir Putin/ISIS/whomever, and that hashtags and forum posts will be our weapons of choice, then we might as well shut the fuck up, turn off the news, and go back to gaming and posting pictures of bananas. Would be less stressful for sure.
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