Gabriella,
And I repeat my response - you can justify anything when you reference your belief so you are discriminating against religious belief.
Nope. You’re conflating the meanings of “belief” – ie, faith- and reason-based.
It is just your over-simplified assertion that criminal acts in the name of political or moral beliefs are based on reasoning whereas criminal acts in the name of religious beliefs are not based on reasoning - you have not demonstrated this assertion to be true.
Nor have I said any such thing
Vla Gabriella.
That's a fallacy. If people are accorded special privileges it is because there is a legal process for examining the particular situation and presumably some benefits or reasons are identified by the State justifying those privileges and so the privilege is not a criminal act. This is a completely different situation from someone breaking the law.
No it isn’t. Why faith is accorded special privileges and the fact that it is are two different matters. Not sure why you keep responding with references to the former when all I’ve said is that the latter is a fact and so it provides cover to anyone who would use faith as a rationale for anything, but there you go.
See above - the argument is examined by a legal process and if it is deemed justified the CofE gets its special treatment. This process is open to scrutiny and can be altered by the tax payers through a democratic process. This is not equivalent to the situation with the suicide bomber who breaks the law for a political or religious or moral cause.
See above. Whatever the rationale for it, when faith is afforded a status in the public square better than just guessing why shouldn’t anyone else not rely on it as better than just guessing too?
No it doesn't. The criteria is whether the action is outside the law, not whether the action is based on a belief - religious or moral or political.
Irrelevant. You tried some “whataboutism” and I pointed it out. That’s all.
Since there are opposing views on just how much reason vs emotion is employed in arriving at moral or political beliefs, it is just your assertion that actions to further a political or moral issue are reasoned or evidence-based and actions to further a religious issue are not reasoned or evidenced.
Wrong again – it isn’t “just my assertion” at all. If for example a politician argues that austerity is the path to economic recovery and success his reasoning can be considered, and after the event the effect of the measure evaluated and compared with states that have taken other paths. It’s inexact and uncertain and subject to re-interpretation but in some manner it’s
investigable. That’s why politicians and moral philosophers on the whole don’t say, “X is correct because that’s my faith”: they don’t need to.
Now consider the claims, God”, “Allah”, “Poseidon”, “Huitzilopochtli” etc. What would you propose could be investigated about them, and how?
Therefore…
That’s called a
non sequitur. You can’t have a “therefore” when your premise has failed.
…focusing your criticism on religious belief seems biased. If an application is made to open a mosque or a social organisation on the same site - the arguments in support of both will be based on reasoning - such as a cost-benefit analysis, assessment of need, demographics etc.
That’s called a false analogy. You can investigate the practical issues you mention, but not the claims of fact made inside the building once it’s up.
When terrorist acts are committed the justifications given by the criminal are a lot more reasoned than "it's my faith" or "it's my political belief". Your over-simplification of this does not make a convincing argument.
For sure there’s a superstructure built on the sand but you do know that the last recordings of the 9/11 hijackers were of them shouting “Allahu Akbar” right? And that incidentally would be the same hijackers who didn’t need an exit strategy that could have compromised their success because their faith told them they were off next to their 72 virgins (who presumably wouldn’t have much say in the matter).
And where would they have been instructed in these claims? Yup – probably in one of the buildings you reference that’s had a cost/benefit done on connecting the drains and such like.
Except that is not an accurate description of the conversation. Your over-simplification…
Just as an aside, there’s a hint of the Vlad in you here. He too throws insults when he’s out of his depth but can’t counter argue, but anyways…
…does not work in the real world. You stated that your issue was with special privileges or criminal actions based on beliefs and you have asserted that actions in the name of a religious faith do not involve reasoning but criminal actions based on moral or political beliefs do involve reasoning or "tend to" involve reasoning.
Not quite. “But that’s my faith” is the beginning and of the conversation – as (I think) Christopher Hitchens noted, if you haven’t been reasoned into a belief you can’t be reasoned out of it. Non-faith beliefs on the other hand have reasoning to support them (which is
why they’re non-faith), however imperfectly or badly applied. That means that – at least in principle – their proponents susceptible to having their minds changed.
And that’s the difference.
Your assertion about the motivation for criminal acts is just guessing if you can't present evidence - such as a link to a statement from a suicide bomber where he only cites his faith to justify his action as opposed to reasoning that the act was justified based on moral arguments or a political or moral grievance.
Don’t be silly. Once the checks and balances of reason and evidence have been removed, anything goes.
Why wouldn’t it?
Again an oversimplification, given religious beliefs and practices are also amenable to change and have changed.
Religious beliefs can and do evolve to varying degrees, but they don’t abandon the “faith” bit. That’s the point.
For the former to work as a defence, the court would have to share the moral belief that violence is justified in certain situations.
So? That’s what they do. A court could for example decide that conjoined twins should be separated when one will certainly die quickly as the result because, if left alone, both would die. Someone of faith on the other hand might insist that no action should be taken that would cause the death of one of them.
Belief in the fact? What does that mean? Either something is a fact or it isn't - your beliefs about facts are not relevant to this discussion. And Mars is irrelevant to the issue of crimes being committed based on religious, moral or political beliefs.
I was merely explaining why your conflation of the meaning of the word “belief” is a mistake. I “believe” that Mars is there because I consider the evidence for it to be sufficient. Someone else might “believe” there to be little green men living there because that’s his “faith”. Each of us “believe”, but with very different rationales.
They were also political men with morals. So what's the point? Your issue was whether beliefs can be successfully used as a defence to a crime. Their religious, political or moral beliefs were not successfully used as a defence.
Morals derived from their religious faith: “It’s correct because a book I think to be holy and thus inerrant supports me.”
How would you propose to argue that his confidence in “faith” is wrong?
That’s the point.
Who has successfully argued "that's my faith" as a defence to an act of terrorism? You are arguing against something that hasn't happened.
Eh? Terrorist have “successfully argued” it – to themselves and presumably to other terrorists. No-one suggests that courts of law accept that defence though, at least in the west.
Yes we are going around in circles and for the story to work they would have to know what "wrong" meant regardless of your guess / psychological assessment of them, so I'll go with the premise of the story that A&E knew what wrong meant. As I said we can agree to disagree or keep going round in circles.
No guess – the claim “knew only good” was Vlad’s premise, not mine.
It doesn't to me.
You’re kidding right?
Where are you getting this list of tests from for entrapment, especially nos. 4 and 5? I have not seen that in any legal definition of entrapment.
Entrapment rules vary country-by-country, but a basic principle is a that a court will take all relevant factors to decide whether the accused has been induced into committing an act he wouldn’t otherwise have committed. In the A&E myth, there’s a stack of them.
And creating an opportunity to commit a wrong act is not entrapment unless you have some case law to link to that supports your version of entrapment.
That’s called a straw man. The police will sometimes for example set up a “sting” car in crime hotspot and will prosecute people who try to steal it. To argue the entrapment defence successfully creating the opportunity is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Telling someone of previously impeccable character where it is when that person has no concept of “wrong” and keeping secret any potential consequences for him (and for all his descendants too) for example would be the additional factors necessary.
My answer was not an analogy to the A&E story - you asked me a question and I answered it.
Yes it was. You used it to draw an analogy with the behaviour of the god of the A&E myth.
By the way, my kids don't always give a toss about my reasons - I sometimes save my breath because I know that sometimes it finally boils down to "because I say so". And I don't always tell them that I am going to punish them and then give them a choice. Sometimes I tell them to do something, they don't, I punish them - no advance warning given.
No doubt, but you presumably don’t hold yourself out to be a moral exemplar when you do it.
BY the way, not sure if your version of the story is the Christian version, but in the Muslim version A&E are told by God not to approach the tree because they would be one of the wrongdoers. We already know that I think they knew what wrong meant. And no snake in the Muslim version encouraging A&E to commit a wrong act. Instead it's Satan telling them that "...Your Lord did not forbid you this tree save that you should become Angels or become of the immortals.” (Quran 7:20).
“Satan” eh? I guess lots of religions have to have baddies involved to explain away bad stuff happening. Here’s a sort of sense to it too when the authors were attempting the earliest and crudest explanations and reconciliations for the phenomena they observed.
Bizarrely though there are I’m told people to this day who think it’s literally true. Weird eh?
No it doesn't - see above.
Yes it does – see above.
