Manchester Arena explosion

[braineclipse]

Nah there would always be another excuse, take religion away and I would be shocked if there is a significant change in suffering -

Good people will stay good
Evil people will continue to commit evil acts
Easily led / mentally ill will continue to be influenced.

Slavery of the chain and whip form has gone from widely accepted to completely unacceptable. What happened? Were everyone in the past just evil or mentally ill?

Or perhaps culture hugely influences human thinking and behaviour...

 

[r-u-s-x]

Slavery of the chain and whip form has gone from widely accepted to completely unacceptable. What happened? Were everyone in the past just evil or mentally ill?

Or perhaps culture hugely influences human thinking and behaviour...

People are still committing evil acts though- hard pushed to equate the positives of removing Slavery and removing Faith - I would say one is inherently evil while the other can be used as an excuse for committing evil acts but is not evil in its self.

 

[braineclipse]

People are still committing evil acts though- hard pushed to equate the positives of removing Slavery and removing Faith - I would say one is inherently evil while the other can be used as an excuse for committing evil acts but is not evil in its self.

I didn't equate the two. I think my post was quite clear on that.

I made a point about good and evil people. It's not news to me that people are still committing evil acts. My point was that morality and what is acceptable has changed. Culture has changed and with it behavior. There is less evil.

 

[r-u-s-x]

I didn't equate the two. I think my post was quite clear on that.

I made a point about good and evil people. It's not news to me that people are still committing evil acts. My point was that morality and what is acceptable has changed. Culture has changed and with it behavior. There is less evil.

I am not saying that the level of good and evil stays constant over time however I don't believe that removing religion is the solution and I think I made that fairly clear:

Nah there would always be another excuse, take religion away and I would be shocked if there is a significant change in suffering -

Good people will stay good
Evil people will continue to commit evil acts
Easily led / mentally ill will continue to be influenced.

 

[Grays_1890]

Do people even realise religion is a pile of brick anyway?

Its been proven that all the crap spouted is lie or fiction anyway.

Break it all down for what its worth and its dictating, first of the ten commandments anyone?

 

[Robbo]

This is interesting for the religious debate:

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/stu...ecause-they-can-override-religious-instinct-/

 

[scaramanga]

This is interesting for the religious debate:

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/stu...ecause-they-can-override-religious-instinct-/

Saw that the other day. Seems to pass the common sense test - I'd like to see more work done.

 

[braineclipse]

I am not saying that the level of good and evil stays constant over time however I don't believe that removing religion is the solution and I think I made that fairly clear:

Nah there would always be another excuse, take religion away and I would be shocked if there is a significant change in suffering -

Good people will stay good
Evil people will continue to commit evil acts
Easily led / mentally ill will continue to be influenced.

So let's change what influences people. I think the amount of truly good or bad people in the world is quite small. Most people are influenced by their culture and normal ways of thinking. Some more than others, but that to can be influenced.

For me more rationality makes sense as a good direction to move. I think moving the world towards that would make things better.

Religion is one of the main sources of irrationality around. The champions of irrationality continue to pretend that that's nothing harmful in irrationality. This makes very little sense to me.

 

[Mr_B]

So let's change what influences people. I think the amount of truly good or bad people in the world is quite small. Most people are influenced by their culture and normal ways of thinking. Some more than others, but that to can be influenced.

For me more rationality makes sense as a good direction to move. I think moving the world towards that would make things better.

Religion is one of the main sources of irrationality around. The champions of irrationality continue to pretend that that's nothing harmful in irrationality. This makes very little sense to me.

Nothing in the history of humanity has caused more death and suffering than religion, from the rise and fall of the roman empire to the crusades to nazism, and now ISIS, with the proliferation of the internet, the weak are easily manipulated and this will unfortunately likely happen with more regularity, unlike the IRA, they don't give any warnings.

 

[nelto]

Nothing in the history of humanity has caused more death and suffering than religion, from the rise and fall of the roman empire to the crusades to nazism, and now ISIS, with the proliferation of the internet, the weak are easily manipulated and this will unfortunately likely happen with more regularity, unlike the IRA, they don't give any warnings.

Sorry mate, but the IRA carried out many many atrocities without warning: La Mon (12 dead), Kingsmills (10 shot dead), Warrington (2 dead), Bloody Friday (11 dead), Birmingham (21 dead) , Guildford (5 dead), Teebane (7 dead), Lisburn (6 dead), Warrenpoint (18 dead), etc, etc ,etc, etc, etc - nearly 1,800 Civilians, Police and Soldiers.

Plus they decimated Manchester in 1996.

I wholeheartedly agree with the religion point though, but the IRA should never be let off the hook just because a new lot of arseholes have emerged.

 

[Mr_B]

Sorry mate, but the IRA carried out many many atrocities without warning: La Mon (12 dead), Kingsmills (10 shot dead), Warrington (2 dead), Bloody Friday (11 dead), Birmingham (21 dead) , Guildford (5 dead), Teebane (7 dead), Lisburn (6 dead), Warrenpoint (18 dead), etc, etc ,etc, etc, etc - nearly 1,800 Civilians, Police and Soldiers.

Plus they decimated Manchester in 1996.

I wholeheartedly agree with the religion point though, but the IRA should never be let off the hook just because a new lot of arseholes have emerged.

I'm not giving the IRA an out whatsoever, they've got blood on their hands like all the other terrorist scum, maybe what I wrote wasn't clear, I guess the point I was trying to make was this new breed of terrorism is unlike anything seen before, the IRA hit a lot of train stations and pubs, these MF'ers hit anywhere in the world with shocking randomness, gone are the days when you could simply keep tabs on Paddy living in a bedsit in kilburn..

 

[nelto]

It was just the IRA giving warnings that got me, but the rest of your post I agree with. This new lone wolf type of terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon for the west to deal with. How our security services are going to combat is anyone's guess, I don't envy them. Spotting individual radicals seems to be a near impossible task, and one which really needs the help of the Muslim community in the UK.

 

[Rorschach]

Sorry mate, but the IRA carried out many many atrocities without warning: La Mon (12 dead), Kingsmills (10 shot dead), Warrington (2 dead), Bloody Friday (11 dead), Birmingham (21 dead) , Guildford (5 dead), Teebane (7 dead), Lisburn (6 dead), Warrenpoint (18 dead), etc, etc ,etc, etc, etc - nearly 1,800 Civilians, Police and Soldiers.

Plus they decimated Manchester in 1996.

I wholeheartedly agree with the religion point though, but the IRA should never be let off the hook just because a new lot of arseholes have emerged.

Indeed. And I might also add that the IRA's motives were not religious per se, but political. The religious divide of Northern Ireland largely lines up with the political for obvious historical reasons but it was not the primary driver in the conflict IMO.

Islam is a religion of some 1.5 billion people or something like that. That number is staggeringly big but how many could you label as 'radical' ( a term I abhor incidentally)? The number must be small. Very very small I would think, but those who choose that path have just found a convenient route to vent their anger IMO. Their extreme interpretation of Islam gives their actions a legitimacy of sorts in their own minds but really the underlying motive may be more political than they would admit. That may not be the always the case but you always have to allow for the lunatic fringe.

To reimagine the world without religion is almost impossible to me and having no facts or numbers to back this up at all I would guess that number of atheists must be on the rise, especially in western society. To pull apart the tenets of a religion is pretty easy and even more so for 'newer' religions. Surely time will eventually purge the creed, the doctrine, the dogma from them all and leave the message bare for dissection.

 

[scaramanga]

It was just the IRA giving warnings that got me, but the rest of your post I agree with. This new lone wolf type of terrorism is a relatively new phenomenon for the west to deal with. How our security services are going to combat is anyone's guess, I don't envy them. Spotting individual radicals seems to be a near impossible task, and one which really needs the help of the Muslim community in the UK.

The trouble is, on a scale from atheist to suicide bomber the difference between many religious people and the ones who press the button is a rounding error.

How do you spot someone mentally unstable in a room full of people who hear voices in their heads? How do you spot someone who doesn't value human life in a room full of people who think that life is just a waiting room for what they consider to be the real life afterwards?

 

[Grays_1890]

Religion needs to be questioned, the bible is a crock of rubbish and when you take into account it was torn apart and put together by the some parts in history it makes it worse.

 

[Crab.C.Nesbitt]

Australia is the prison, America they went by themselves

We originally shipped a lot of prisoners to America.. .that only stopped after the American war of independence. (Although admittedly some people did go if their own accord, to make a new life for themselves, as thet later did to Australia).

 

[spasm]

80 killed. 300 injured in Kabul bombing.

 

[JerusalemMan]

Hmm

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/spurs-fans-terror/

 

[Glenda's Legs]

Hmm

http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/spurs-fans-terror/

Looks like whatever the article was has now been taken down.

 

[Glenda's Legs]

80 killed. 300 injured in Kabul bombing.

As I was getting ready for work this morning I heard something on the radio about a huge car bomb. I stopped in my tracks to listen and then heard "...in Afghanistan ".
I am ashamed to say my immediate reaction was almost a sigh of relief that it wasn't something closer to home.
How bloody awful was that of me.
I guess we can become a little desensitised to the news but I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself today for that reaction, even if it was only a momentary thought.